Advertisement
Australian expat accused of spying for China is no ‘James Bond’, was ‘working innocently’: lawyer
- Alexander Csergo, accused of ‘reckless foreign interference’, is being held in a top-security jail cell in Australia
- His case is a ‘show trial’, his lawyer says, which reflects ‘an absolute hypocrisy in our approach to doing business with China’
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
69
Su-Lin Tanin Singapore
The Australian businessman arrested in Sydney last month on the criminal charge of “reckless foreign interference” has not been let out of his prison cell, according to his lawyer Bernard Collaery.
Advertisement
Few people have been able to speak to Alexander Csergo, a marketing executive whom Collaery said was being held as a high-security risk prisoner at Parklea Correctional Centre in Sydney’s northwest, and had not been afforded his “universal rights”.
Csergo had been working in China for 12 years but returned home from Shanghai in early March and was arrested at his home in Bondi.
Police alleged that Csergo had provided reports on Australian defence and economic matters to individuals supposedly linked to Chinese foreign intelligence services for a fee, but Collaery said during a bail hearing that Csergo had gathered his work largely from open sources.
Collaery, who was not able to visit the businessman in jail, described the case as the start of a “show trial” by Canberra that would serve as a warning to other would-be transgressors against Australia.
Advertisement
“If you read the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) … providing public-source compilations and market research opinion on subjects such as EV [electric vehicle] car sales, ore reserves, [and] Aukus within the extended definition of ‘national security’, was not a declared ‘no-go’ area,” he said.
Advertisement