Former top aide to New York Governor Hochul is charged with acting as Chinese agent
Linda Sun, ex-deputy chief of staff to Kathy Hochul, allegedly provided ‘improper benefits’ to China for millions of dollars in husband’s business transactions
A former top aide to New York Governor Kathy Hochul has been charged with acting as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese government and laundering millions of dollars for China, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said on Tuesday in an indictment that also accused several officials in Beijing’s New York City consulate as co-conspirators.
Prosecutors said Linda Sun, a naturalised US citizen born in China, was arrested in the morning at her home in Long Island and pleaded not guilty in US District Court in Brooklyn later in the day. Sun’s husband Chris Hu – a business owner and also a naturalised US citizen originally from China – also faces criminal charges and pleaded not guilty.
Sun was released on a US$1.5 million bond, and Hu was released on a US$500,000 bond.
While working for about a decade in the administrations of Hochul and former Governor Andrew Cuomo before her, Sun, 41, blocked representatives of Taiwan’s government from meeting state officials, and tried to arrange for a high-level New York state official to visit China, according to the indictment filed last month and unsealed on Tuesday.
Prosecutors accused Sun, who served as Hochul’s deputy chief of staff for about a year, of “changing [the Hochul administration’s] messaging regarding issues of importance to the PRC and the CCP”, using the acronyms for the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, respectively.
“Sun repeatedly violated internal rules and protocols within the … governor’s office to provide improper benefits to PRC and CCP representatives, including by providing unauthorised invitation letters from the office of the … governor that were used to facilitate travel by PRC government officials into the United States for meetings with [New York] government officials,” it added.
