The second person ever charged with contravening Australia’s foreign interference laws appeared in a local court yesterday following his arrest a day earlier.
Alexander Csergo, 55, appeared via videoconference before a local court in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta and lawyers asked to adjourn the matter until tomorrow, which was granted by the judge.
Court documents listed a charge of reckless foreign interference against Csergo, with the offense occurring between February 2021 and this month in Australia’s New South Wales state and Shanghai.
Photo: AFP
That makes him the second person charged under the law, which criminalizes activity that helps a foreign power interfere with Australia’s sovereignty or national interest, since it was passed in 2018.
Csergo allegedly engaged in conduct on behalf of or in collaboration with persons acting on behalf of a principal, and was “reckless as to whether the conduct would support intelligence activities of a foreign principal, and a part of the conduct was covert or involved deception”, the court document said.
Csergo recently returned from China and was arrested on Friday at a residence in the Sydney suburb of Bondi, neighbors said.
Without naming Csergo, the Australian Federal Police on Friday said a man was arrested as part of a joint investigation with the country’s intelligence services, and the offense related to Australian defense and national security information.
A LinkedIn profile for an Alexander Csergo who lived in Shanghai showed that he was a digital and data marketing consultant with experience in the advertising industry in China, Singapore and Australia.
He had worked in China since 2011, it showed.
In the statement on Friday, police said the arrested man was contacted while overseas by an individual claiming to be from a think tank.
The man then met two individuals, known to him as “Ken” and “Evelyn,” who offered him money to obtain information about Australian defense, economic and national security arrangements, as well as matters relating to other countries, police said.
The court document also named “Ken” and “Evelyn” as engaging with Csergo.
Police said he compiled a number of reports for the individuals and received payment for those reports.
Police said “Ken” and “Evelyn” worked for a foreign intelligence service and are undertaking intelligence collection activities.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS