Agents from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) found a cache of secret government files when they broke into a Canberra home in October 2015 while searching for evidence that one of the occupants might be a Chinese spy.
The apartment belonged to a woman dubbed the “queen” of the Australia-China social scene, Sheri Yan, and her husband, Roger Uren, a former high-ranking Australian intelligence official and diplomat.
A Four Corners-Fairfax investigation has revealed the secret ASIO raid was targeting Yan over allegations she was a Chinese Communist Party spy.
The highly classified documents contained details of what Western agencies knew about the operations of Chinese intelligence.
Mr Uren is suspected of having taken them from his former employer, the Office of National Assessments, before he left the agency in August 2001.
Removing classified documents is generally an offence but, to date, no charges have been laid.
The raid was timed to coincide with the FBI’s arrest of Yan in New York on charges of bribing John Ashe, when he was president of the United Nations General Assembly. She pleaded guilty and was jailed last year
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