CHINA said it has sentenced a UK national to five years in jail over alleged charges of espionage.
Missing Brit businessman Ian Stones disappeared in 2018 and was later convicted in 2022 – but Beijing only revealed the sentencing this week.
Ian Stones was convicted of espionage by Beijing in 2022
GettyThe UK citizen vanished from public view 5 years ago[/caption]
Stones, aged about 70, had worked in China for over a decade for big US firms including General Motors and Pfizer before he suddenly vanished in 2018.
For 6 years, it has now emerged he was detained by Beijing as part of a paranoid crackdown, reports The Wall Street Journal who broke the news on Thursday.
All the while, there has been no official mention of his case from either Chinese or UK authorities.
Experts suggested that the silence surrounding his case means its likely that other foreign business people may be being secretly held by China while governments or their families work privately to secure their release.
Asked about the Journal’s report today, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said a Beijing court in 2022 “sentenced in first instance the British defendant… to five years in prison for the crime of illegally obtaining intelligence for overseas actors”.
He said Stone’s appeal was rejected in September last year.
Beijing, Wang said, “fully guaranteed the various legitimate rights” of the prisoner and had arranged for UK officials to visit him and attend his trial.
“China is a country governed by the rule of law,” he claimed.
Stone’s daughter, Laura, said that neither family or British embassy staff had been allowed to any of the legal documents related to the case.
“There has been no confession to the alleged crime, however my father has stoically accepted and respects that under Chinese law he must serve out the remainder of his sentence,” she told the WSJ.
Stones set up a Beijing-based investment management consulting film, Navisino Partners, about 15 years ago.
He also worked as a senior adviser in China to a NY-based research firm, the Conference Board, where he worked to develop relationships with Chinese government agencies and its Central Bank.
China and Britain have traded barbs in recent months over allegations of perceived espionage and its resulting impact on national security.
This month, Beijing said the head of a foreign consultancy had been found to be spying for Britain’s MI6 intelligence service.
The Ministry of State Security said in a WeChat post that MI6 used a foreign national with the surname Huang to establish an “intelligence cooperation relationship”.
And Britain has in turn warned that Chinese spies are increasingly targeting officials, allegations that Beijing has denied.
A researcher at the British parliament was arrested last year under the Official Secrets Act and subsequently denied spying for Beijing.
China, which has a broad definition of state secrets, has publicised several other alleged spying cases.
In May, authorities sentenced 78-year-old American citizen John Shing-wan Leung to life in prison for espionage.
China last year also conducted raids on a string of big-name consulting, research and due diligence firms.
Last May, China said it had raided the offices of US consultancy firm Capvision in order to safeguard its “national security and development interests”.
Beijing also questioned staff at the Shanghai branch of another American consultancy, Bain, in April.
And authorities detained workers and shuttered a Beijing office belonging to US-based due diligence firm Mintz Group in March.
The US government and its chambers of commerce warned that the raids damage investor confidence and the operations of foreign businesses in China.
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