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<\/p>\nA jury has found Australian businessman Alexander Csergo guilty of reckless foreign interference, after a Sydney court heard he compiled reports for two suspected Chinese spies while overseas.<\/p>\n
The 59-year-old pleaded not guilty to the single charge and has been facing a trial in the NSW District Court since mid-February.<\/p>\n
The court heard he was asked to provide reports to two people he knew as “Ken” and “Evelyn” in Shanghai between 2021 and when he returned to Sydney in 2023.<\/p>\n
The Crown’s case was that he believed they worked for a Chinese intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), and was reckless as to whether his activities would support the intelligence activities of China.<\/p>\n
But Csergo’s lawyers argued he only provided publicly available information that was passed off as his own work \u2014 simply deceiving Ken and Evelyn in exchange for payments.<\/p>\n
Jurors deliberated for two days before returning a guilty verdict this afternoon.<\/p>\n
In the dock, Csergo quietly sighed as the result was revealed.<\/p>\n
The trial came nearly three years after he was charged.<\/p>\n
He is the first person to be charged with the offence, which carries a maximum potential punishment of 15 years’ imprisonment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The trial ran for approximately three weeks. (ABC News: Jamie McKinnell)<\/p>\n
Csergo will remain on bail over the weekend. However, the Crown has flagged it will apply for detention on Monday.<\/p>\n
The court heard Ken and Evelyn asked for reports about topics including lithium mining, the change in the German government, defence, the Quad alliance and AUKUS.<\/p>\n
The Crown described Csergo as a “prolific” user of WeChat and pointed to about 2,800 messages exchanged with Ken to illustrate what was said to have become a collegiate relationship.<\/p>\n
Csergo provided reports in hard-copy form or on USB drives during meetings in at-times empty cafes and restaurants and received cash in return.<\/p>\n
Crown Prosecutor Jennifer Single SC alleged he believed Ken and Evelyn were grooming him as a potential source and highlighted a document the businessman had with him when he returned to Sydney, which was a “shopping list” of topics Ken wanted collected.<\/p>\n
But the defence team said there was a fatal flaw in the prosecution’s case \u2014 there was no evidence he revealed any national security secrets.<\/p>\n
A LinkedIn introduction<\/p>\n
Before Csergo met Ken and Evelyn, he was contacted on LinkedIn in November 2021 by a person who said she was from a think tank and suggested he provide paid consultancy services, the court heard.<\/p>\n
In messages, the LinkedIn user said the clients were state-owned companies that wanted to thrive in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Jennifer Single SC says Csergo believed Ken and Evelyn were grooming him as a potential future\u00a0source. (ABC News: Adam Griffiths)<\/p>\n
Ms Single said it was “very clear from the beginning” the consultancy firm was a “front” for the MSS or another part of the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n
Early requests developed into a trusting relationship, she argued, and despite being suspicious the think tank was a cover, Csergo continued meeting Ken and Evelyn.<\/p>\n
He collated, reviewed and analysed information for them over a long period, she said in a closing address this week, urging jurors to consider Csergo’s state of mind.<\/p>\n
Parts of the trial were conducted in a closed court and some witnesses were given pseudonyms.<\/p>\n
In his directions to jurors, Judge Craig Smith SC said this was “standard procedure” in cases of this type.<\/p>\n
Hours-long police interviews<\/p>\n
While Csergo did not give evidence in the trial, jurors were played two recorded interviews in which he willingly spoke to police in Australia for around eight hours.<\/p>\n
In one recording, he explained the topics of his reports, how they were provided, the payments and the “shopping list”.<\/p>\n
“I folded it up and kept it, and that was it. I haven’t done anything with it, literally,” he said.<\/p>\n
He told police he assumed all his communication in China was being monitored.<\/p>\n
“You have a sense of, the government is there, it’s present, it’s observing you,” he said.<\/p>\n
Csergo said the “think tank” may have had a “government flavour”, or it may have been someone “checking me” to establish his thinking and “keep a tab on me”.<\/p>\n
He said the information sources he used were all public and anything that had a risk element was created in a “fictitious way”.<\/p>\n
The narratives he used sometimes included “blatant cut and paste” but were constructed in a way to “raise a flag” if they were communicated, he told authorities.<\/p>\n
“The problem is \u2026 within the environment that you’re in, you’re surveilled. Assuming you’re being monitored, there is no way to communicate outside of that,” he said.<\/p>\n
Reports full of ‘gibberish’<\/p>\n
Ms Single said what was of ultimate value to Ken and Evelyn were the businessman’s connections and contacts.<\/p>\n
But those supposed contacts were fake, according to defence counsel Iain Todd, who said his client merely pretended to have access to people, including former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd.<\/p>\n
“He never spoke to interviewees. He lied about that,” Mr Todd said during his closing address.<\/p>\n
“He never gave access to anyone because there was no-one to give access to.”<\/p>\n
Mr Todd reminded jurors of one expert opinion that Csergo’s lithium report contained “gibberish”.<\/p>\n
“He lied to Ken and Evelyn and deceived them and in doing so, got some money out of it,” he said.<\/p>\n
Csergo fielded more than 3100 questions across two police interviews and even invited them to check through his phone, Mr Todd said.<\/p>\n
“He told the AFP the truth about his conduct and this was verified by the investigations,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Todd said the messages showed times when Csergo was pushing back and deflecting, reluctant to become involved with national security information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jury has found Australian businessman Alexander Csergo guilty of reckless foreign interference, after a Sydney court heard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[266414,248176,64,63,512,248173,266413,1105,44,2733,248172,4933,1107],"class_list":["post-537167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-alexander-cesrgo-verdict","tag-alexander-csergo","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-china","tag-chinese-intelligence","tag-csergo-verdict","tag-guilty","tag-news","tag-nsw","tag-reckless-foreign-interference","tag-shanghai","tag-verdict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}