China Sentences Computer Engineer To Death For Spying: State Media

A Chinese man has been sentenced to death for leaking more than 150,000 classified documents to an unidentified foreign spy agency between 2002 and 2011, the local media reported Tuesday.

Huang Yu, 48, was paid a total of US$700,000 for the information, Shanghai Daily reported citing a report by China Central Television. It didn’t say when sentence was passed, or if the execution had been carried out, but said Huang had been apprehended in 2011.

Huang was a computer technician in southwest China’s Sichuan Province who worked for a research institute which helped develop a cipher system for China’s government and military, CCTV reported.

Filled anger after he was sacked in 2004 for poor performance, he is said to have contacted a “foreign spy organization” on the Internet, offering to sell documents he had obtained while working for his former employer.

Meeting with a “foreign spy” in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, Huang handed over documents that covered secrets ranging from the ruling Communist Party to military and financial issues, CCTV said.

He is said to have made contact with the agent on 21 occasions.

He was given an initial US$10,000 for his cooperation and a salary of US$5,000 a month was agreed, according to CCTV. It said he also received training related to spying activities.

When Huang began to run out of documents, he targeted his wife and brother-in-law who also worked for government departments handling state secrets, CCTV said.

Eventually, his frequent travel and sudden unexplained wealth caught up with him, it added.

Huang’s wife and his brother-in-law were sentenced to five and three years, respectively, for “negligence” that caused the leak of state secrets. Also, 29 of his former colleagues were punished, CCTV reported, without elaborating.

Huang’s brother-in-law was the general engineer at Huang’s former workplace, and his wife worked for an similar institute. Huang had asked her to copy classified information and bring it home, and he took the chance when repairing his brother-in-law’s computer to download information from it, CCTV reported.

In a statement, the state safety bureau of Chengdu, Sichuan’s capital, said: “He had offered a great deal of classified information in 10 years, which caused serious threats to our core government and military departments”.