US Prosecutors Charge Former Federal Reserve Adviser with Economic Espionage for China
US prosecutors announced that they have charged a former Federal Reserve adviser with economic espionage on behalf of China. John Harold Rogers, 63, is accused of attempting to steal trade secrets while working as a senior adviser at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
According to the indictment, unsealed on Friday, Rogers leaked secret information from the Fed’s board and from its powerful rate-setting committee to his Chinese co-conspirators, who posed as graduate students at a PRC university. The confidential information was economically valuable when secret, and Rogers allegedly exploited his employment with the FRB to solicit trade-secret information regarding proprietary economic data sets, including deliberations on tariffs against China.
Rogers allegedly passed the information electronically to his personal email account, in violation of FRB policy, or printed it prior to traveling to China, in preparation for meetings with his co-conspirators. The Department of Justice has accused Rogers of spying on behalf of Beijing and has charged him with economic espionage.
