Ex-Canadian Space Agency employee accused of clandestinely serving China’s interests while on the job will be able to obtain internal satellite data from his ex-employer to bolster his defense in anticipation of his criminal trial, ruled a judge at the Longueuil courthouse on Thursday.
The story so far:
September 20, 2019: Wanping Zheng is leaving the Canadian Space Agency after a 26-year career. He landed shortly after at Spacety, a Chinese company which is developing a network of satellites in connection with a state company of the Chinese regime. Mr. Zheng becomes CEO of the European division of Spacety.
December 8, 2021: RCMP announce Wanping Zheng has been charged with breach of trust by a public official for allegedly using his status at the Canadian Space Agency to favor Spacety before changing jobs. The federal police force claims that this is a case of foreign interference in the Canadian federal apparatus.
January 26, 2023: The US government announces sanctions against Spacety, and more specifically its European division, for providing satellite imagery services to a Russian company to aid the combat operations of the Russian mercenary group Wagner in Ukraine. The company denies the allegations.
Quebec Court judge Marc-Antoine Carette ruled in favor of the accused Wanping Zheng and ordered that the Crown corporation begin research to provide him with the information he says he needs to defend himself.
Mr. Zheng, a resident of Brossard, worked for 26 years at the headquarters of the Canadian Space Agency in Saint-Hubert, on the South Shore. Court documents show that for years Canadian intelligence services tried unsuccessfully to alert his bosses about him. In 2019, when his employer finally launched an internal investigation into him, he resigned and went to work as CEO of the European division of Spacety, a Chinese space exploration company.
PHOTO FROM A YOUTUBE VIDEO
Wanping Zheng is accused of breach of trust by an official.
Spacety is working in partnership with a Chinese state-owned company to create a “constellation” of around 100 satellites capable of photographing all regions of the world, “day and night, good weather, bad weather”, according to its own announcements.
Partners for a Chinese project
In December 2021, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested the Brossard scientist and announced that he would have participated in an interference maneuver by China in the Canadian federal apparatus. He was charged with “breach of trust by a public official” for acts committed in 2018 and 2019.
Sworn police statements filed in court and obtained by The Press detail the acts of which the official is accused: he allegedly contacted private sector companies with which the Canadian Space Agency did business and tried to convince them to participate in the deployment of the network of Chinese satellites launched by Spacety as well as in the installation company relay stations on the ground.
In a motion for disclosure of evidence filed in court, the scientist’s lawyer, Mr.e Andrew Barbacki, however, asserts that Mr. Zheng’s involvement in a Chinese company was not incompatible with his work at the Canadian Space Agency. To demonstrate this, he demanded access to documents concerning the projects on which his client was working within the Agency, as well as the projects of the federal body in general concerning miniature satellites and relay stations. of satellites.
The Space Agency had said that it had no reliable document in its possession that would give an accurate picture of the situation and had therefore transmitted nothing. On Thursday, the judge ordered him to get to work and write a brief description of all the relevant projects that Mr. Zheng worked on and a list of all the Agency’s projects involving miniature satellites and relay stations for satellites.
Suspected of aiding Wagner’s mercenaries
In addition to this procedure before the Court of Quebec, Spacety also found itself in embarrassment last winter when the American government imposed heavy sanctions on it by saying that it had evidence that it had supported the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
The US Treasury Department has specifically targeted the Chinese space exploration firm because it is, according to Washington, part of “the infrastructure that supports battlefield operations in Ukraine”.
The Treasury Department says Spacety provided highly accurate satellite imagery of the Ukrainian terrain to a Russian technology company on order. “These images were collected to aid Wagner Group combat operations in Ukraine,” the update states. The US government has not provided any evidence to support these allegations, but the sanctions still have the force of law now.