A former senior adviser to the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors, John Harold Rogers, has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for lying to federal investigators about sharing restricted central bank information with Chinese intelligence operatives, the US Department of Justice has announced.
Rogers, 64, was convicted in February of making false statements to investigators after denying that he had disclosed sensitive Federal Reserve information relating to monetary policy. A jury, however, acquitted him of the more serious charge of conspiracy to commit economic espionage.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Rogers deliberately concealed his actions from investigators and later repeated the falsehoods during his trial.
“John Rogers spent years secretly funneling sensitive Federal Reserve information to Chinese spies, then looked investigators in the eye and lied about it. And when that wasn’t enough, he lied again under oath at trial,” Pirro said in a statement on Wednesday.
The sentencing comes as the administration of President Donald Trump intensifies efforts to crack down on alleged economic espionage linked to Beijing.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced Rogers to more than three years in prison and ordered him to serve an additional 12 months of supervised release after completing his jail term.
Defence lawyers had sought a sentence of no further imprisonment beyond the approximately 18 months Rogers had already spent in custody. That time will be credited towards his prison sentence.
According to the Justice Department, Rogers served as a senior adviser in the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of International Finance from 2010 to 2021, a role that gave him access to confidential information on US monetary policy and deliberations of the Federal Open Market Committee.
Prosecutors argued that early access to Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions could have enabled Beijing to earn “enormous profits” through trading its estimated $1.5 trillion holdings of US Treasury securities.
Court documents alleged that Rogers began a covert relationship in 2017 with Hummin Lee, whom prosecutors identified as a Chinese intelligence operative he met during a conference in China.
Authorities said Rogers passed sensitive Federal Reserve information during meetings in hotel rooms in China, which were presented as academic teaching sessions.
The Justice Department also alleged that Rogers printed restricted Federal Reserve documents before travelling to China, removed classification markings before emailing the materials to his personal account, and later forwarded sensitive information to a professor at Fudan University.
In return, prosecutors said Rogers received university professorships and financial benefits.
Investigators further revealed that during a February 2020 interview with the Federal Reserve’s inspector general, Rogers denied ever sharing restricted Federal Reserve information outside the institution.
“Never,” Rogers responded when asked directly whether he had disclosed confidential Federal Reserve information, according to the Justice Department.
Boluwatife Enome
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