By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, Aug. 13: A Chinese national earlier held for suspicion of impersonation and forgery has been arrested on Tuesday in the National Capital Region (NCR), for money laundering and hawala racket, after a massive search operation by the Delhi police.
On Tuesday, India’s tax department conducted searches in 21 locations in Delhi, Ghaziabad, and Gurugram after getting “credible information” of the Chinese involvement in money laundering and hawala network. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in a statement said, “Based on the credible information that few Chinese individuals and their Indian associates were involved in money laundering and hawala transactions through series of shell entities, a search action was mounted at various premises of these Chinese entities, their close confederates and couple of bank employees.”
The Chinese national identified to be Luo Sang, who held the fake identity ‘Charlie Peng’ was also arrested in connection with the money laundering and hawala racket. At the time of his arrest, security agencies seized two fake Aadhar cards, two forged Indian passports, a fake PAN card. Lou Sang still operates as Charlie Peng and lives in Gurugram. According to the CBDT, he was using 8-10 bank accounts and represented fake Chinese companies in hawala operations worth Rs 1000 crores.
Sang was earlier arrested in 2018, by a joint team of central intelligence agencies and the Delhi Police special cell for impersonation and forgery. He had married an Indian national to expedite acquiring an Indian passport. The investigators alleged that he was working for Chinese intelligence agencies and running business of hawala transactions through a currency exchange firm, but he was granted bail by a Delhi court in 2019.
During the interrogations at the time, Sang reportedly admitted to various narratives including being a Tibetan fleeing Chinese persecution, a criminal who was forced into spying by the Chinese government as well as being a PLA soldier. “He was a hard nut to crack. A trained spy, he confused his interrogators. He repeatedly changed his Chinese background story several times to hoodwink us,” recalled an official who questioned him in 2018, cited by Indian daily Times Now News.
The Indian news agency also revealed that Sang who admitted to interrogators of being a spy said that his two prime tasks were to somehow try to enter the inner circle of Dalai Lama for which he made several trips to Himachal Pradesh where the Tibetan leader resides and also to Majnu-ka-tilla Tibetan colony in Delhi. And to assist Chinese embassy officials help transfer money and arrange logistics for them like providing cars and arranging their travel.
In 2013, a Tibetan-origin man and suspected Chinese espionage operative Pema Tsering was arrested in McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala, where the exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama resides. Police at the time said that during interrogation, Tsering admitted to being an ex-member of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China and also having served in the People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF).
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Very useful phrase
The Chinese communist Party is an Organization which uses any means possible to lure people to their cause. They will not hesitate to use money, mafia and honey trap to gain access to high ranking officials or people in power.
A classic story of Chinese deception and deceit in prying on vulnerable people to do their dirty job is the story of US State Department employee Candace Claiborne 2010. She was working as part of the US embassy’s classified information handler.
She lived at the US compound worth US$434 million fortress that projected both power and fear. The complex featured shatterproof glass, multiple checkpoints and a moat to prevent Chinese agents bugging offices of the building.
However, she had a vulnerability. Her son, who needed to go to university but having no money, she befriended a man known as Wu. They became friends and Mr Wu was very helpful to buy ticket for him to come to Beijing and even finding accomodation for him. She became dependent on Mr Wu and they corresponded regularly. But Mr Wu was no benevolent businessman nor the generosity out of kindness. He was a Chinese secret agent.
Mr Wu asked Claiborne for State Department Internal Assessment of dialogue between US and China in when Joe Biden was Vice President.
Wu pushed hard while throwing money at her son. Over the years she spilled the beans and provided high intelligence to the Chinese. She was caught when she returned to the US.
The Chinese secret Service is known as MSS (Ministry of State Security).
Their cunning, their patience in grooming potential agents are well known. Often they cultivate such recruits and then groom them to work for them.
So, while her son was burning money he got from Wu, the MSS staged its biggest coup in penetrating into the communications system of the CIA and all CIA sources in China were eliminated. One of them working for a Chinese Government agency shot in broad daylight in front of his colleagues.
In this report, the reader is left guessing, where does the Chinese embassy taking the money and to whom it is being given.
Dharamsala probably is a nest of Chinese spies like the this one who are working to undermine the CTA including all other Tibetan institutions by stealth.
Nothing new here. In former times it was Darjeeling and Shillong. Just ask the Namgyal of Sikkim. The difference being, in former generations it’s easier for the average person to distinguish between a white person and an Asian. Nowadays, with so many interracial mixing and immigration, who knows from appearances? And just like how not all white people are equal, it would also seem that not all Chinese are equal given the Chinese diaspora over the centuries.
Is a Tibetan in Switzerland Tibetan or Swiss? And how does that identity pass down the generations to grandchildren or great grandchildren who have never set eyes on Tibet but are quite familiar with Swiss ways?