Singapore security authorities arrested a man on Wednesday (Dec. 30) who was repatriated to Singapore after serving his sentence in the United States. Singapore’s Internal Security Ministry said it will investigate him to determine whether he poses a security threat to Singapore.
Dickson Yeo, a Singaporean citizen, was arrested last November at a New York airport in the United States and charged with engaging in illegal acts as a “foreign agent.
Singapore will not allow our nationals to be subverted or used by any foreign actor to engage in activities that undermine our security and national interests,” the Ministry of Internal Security said in an announcement the same day.
The announcement added: “The government takes very seriously any Singaporean who has established clandestine relationships with foreign governments and engages in espionage or subversive activities at the behest of foreign powers.”
Previously, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said in July this year that the U.S. side was informed of Singapore’s arrest of Yao Junwei in November last year. The ministry said at the time that an investigation did not reveal any direct threat to Singapore’s security from Yao.
Yao Junwei admitted to U.S. investigators that he used his consulting firm as a cover to extract information from U.S. government and military personnel on behalf of China from 2015 to 2019.
Yao Junwei’s consulting firm was established in 2018 to seek out U.S. military or government personnel with undisclosed information, including civilian personnel involved in the U.S. Air Force’s F-35B stealth fighter program, and paid them to write reports. Yao claimed this was information his Asian clients wanted and actually gave to the Chinese government.
Yao also told U.S. investigators that his initial intelligence work was focused on targets in other Asian countries, and then focused on the United States.
A U.S. court sentenced Yao on Oct. 9 to 14 months in prison, counting from his arrest last November, after he was deported to Singapore on Dec. 30, after pleading guilty in July to “illegally acting as a foreign agent.
The 39-year-old Yao Junwei was a doctoral student at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Singapore media reported that the institute suspended Yao’s doctoral candidacy after his arrest in the United States. Huang Jing, who was a chair professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, was one of Yao Junwei’s mentors, and Huang Jing was charged with espionage in Singapore and had his permanent residency permanently revoked and deported by Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs in 2017.
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