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Ex-CIA agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee jailed over China spying for 19 years

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were deposited in his Hong Kong bank account between May 2010 and December 2013.

Ex-CIA agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee jailed over China spying for 19 years

Representational image (Photo: IStock)

The former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee may have devasted US intelligence collection in China by giving up its network of informants to Beijing agents was sentenced on Friday to 19 years in prison.

Lee, naturalized US citizen who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1994 to 2007, was arrested in January 2018 for illegally possessing classified US defense information, which prosecutors alleged he turned over to Chinese intelligence agents.

His indictment said that he moved to Hong Kong in 2010 and begun accepting payments from Chinese agents who asked him for sensitive information on the CIA.

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The case has driven much speculation about what really lies beneath because it took the government six years from first investigating Lee to arresting him.

Lee had been a case officer in China and other countries during his CIA career, which gave him knowledge of its covert collection methods and sources on the ground.

Prosecutors said Chinese intelligence officers gave Lee hundreds of thousands of dollars and that he likely gave them all the information he had from his 13-year career in the CIA.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were deposited in his Hong Kong bank account between May 2010 and December 2013.

Lee created a document containing information about CIA activities, including locations to which US agents would be assigned.

In May, former CIA spy Kevin Mallory was sentenced to 20 years in prison, after being convicted of conspiring to transmit US defence secrets to China.

Former US intelligence officer Ron Rockwell Hansen was sentenced in September to 10 years in prison.

(With inputs from agency)

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