Australia gives green light for foreign interference trial

Australia’s attorney general has approved foreign interference charges against an Australian marketing executive who worked in China, seven months after the man was arrested by police on his return from Shanghai.
Alexander Csergo, 55, who appeared on video link in a Sydney court on Wednesday, has been in custody since his arrest by Australian Federal Police in April at his mother’s beachside Bondi home.
He was the first person charged with “reckless foreign interference”, and the second person charged under a law that criminalises activity that helps a foreign power interfere with Australia’s sovereignty or national interests. It carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence.
Csergo has denied the allegations and has not yet entered a plea.
He is accused of accepting cash from suspected Chinese intelligence agents in exchange for writing reports on Australia, including its AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership with the United States and Britain, and lithium mining, while living in Shanghai.