More legal troubles have been piled on Linda Sun, a former aide to two New York governors who has been accused of using her position to help the Chinese government.
Ms. Sun and her husband, Chris Hu, face new charges that they helped steer lucrative contracts to Chinese companies to sell masks and ventilators to New York’s government at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. They received millions of dollars from those companies for helping secure the contracts and then failed to report the money as taxable income, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.
Ms. Sun “enriched herself to the tune of millions of dollars when New York State was at its most vulnerable,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a news release.
Jarrod L. Schaeffer, a lawyer for Ms. Sun, said prosecutors were “publicizing feverish accusations unmoored from the facts.”
“Ms. Sun vehemently denies these latest allegations and intends to vigorously contest them in court,” Mr. Schaeffer said in a statement.
Seth DuCharme, a lawyer for Mr. Hu, said he remained confident in his client’s innocence and that the government had been “scrambling to try to come up with some new charging theory” with a trial approaching.
The case against Ms. Sun and Mr. Hu is part of the Justice Department’s efforts, particularly by prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, to clamp down on what it says is the Chinese Communist Party’s transnational campaign of repression and influence-peddling.
At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Ms. Sun was working as Governor Cuomo’s chief diversity officer, as well as helping coordinate New York’s purchase of personal protective equipment from China.
The Chinese government recommended several vendors that could sell New York masks and ventilators, prosecutors said, but Ms. Sun personally referred two companies that had not been recommended. One was run by Ms. Sun’s second cousin, while the other was operated by Mr. Hu.
According to the new charges, the two companies entered into agreements with New York worth tens of millions of dollars. Ms. Sun and Mr. Hu received $2.3 million from her second cousin after Ms. Sun falsely claimed that her cousin’s company had been recommended by the Jiangsu Chamber of Commerce, prosecutors said. Ms. Sun did so by altering an email from the Jiangsu Chamber, inserting the name of the company, prosecutors said.
The new charges, which include tax evasion and honest services wire fraud, add to a suite of accusations against Ms. Sun and Mr. Hu. Prosecutors say that Ms. Sun, who later served as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, and Mr. Hu used her positions to enrich themselves and promoted propaganda from the Chinese government.
Last September, Ms. Sun was charged with 10 criminal counts, including violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and money laundering conspiracy, while Mr. Hu was charged with money laundering.
According to prosecutors, the Chinese government funneled gifts to Ms. Sun and Mr. Hu — including salted ducks and orchestra tickets — and facilitated millions of dollars in business for Mr. Hu’s China-based companies.
In exchange, prosecutors said, Ms. Sun removed references to Taiwan from New York State communications, blocked Taiwanese officials from access to the governor’s office and stopped them from meeting state leaders. She ensured that Ms. Hochul did not publicly mention the Uyghur people, a primarily Muslim ethnic group in China that has faced persecution from the Communist Party, prosecutors said.
In recent years, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York have closely scrutinized the influence of the Chinese government in politics and society. That has included a crackdown on Operation Fox Hunt, the Chinese Communist Party’s clandestine efforts to suppress dissidents overseas.
But at the same time, the Trump administration has called on federal prosecutors to scale back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, under which Ms. Sun is charged and which has been used to clamp down on Chinese influence. Ms. Sun’s lawyers have argued that the charges should be dismissed in light of the Trump administration’s directive.
A criminal trial for Ms. Sun, 41, and Mr. Hu, 40, is scheduled for November.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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