FORMER FEDERAL RESERVE OFFICIAL CHARGED WITH ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
OFFICIAL INDICTED FOR WORKING WITH CHINA
THIS STORY HAS BEEN UPDATED AT 9:08 pm EST, January 31, 2025
John H. Rogers, a former advisor for the Federal Reserve, was charged today with conspiracy to commit economic espionage for China. Rogers is alleged to have provided restricted U.S. financial and economic information to Chinese government intelligence officers. The government also charged Rogers with lying to federal agents.
Rogers had left the Fed in May 2021 and was teaching at Fudan University in Shanghai as a professor in the Fudan International School of Finance. Rogers was previously a senior adviser in the Federal Reserve’s Division of International Finance.
Beginning in 2018, while still working for the Fed, Rogers is alleged to have passed on the information to Chinese intelligence and security personnel posing as graduate students at the university.
Although a Department of Justice press release alleged that the data that Rogers provided the Chinese agents would allow China to manipulate the U.S. market, “in a manner similar to insider trading” and that the information Rogers provided his Chinese contacts included information on the Federal Funds Rate, no such claims appear in the indictment.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Rogers used a personal email to transfer the information to China and that the economist was paid $450,000 for his work as a university professor.
The U.S. Department of Justice also alleges that Rogers lied in a 2020 interview with agents of the Federal Reserve Board’s Office of Inspector General. The case has been brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Although the press release quoted “Edward R. Martin, Jr.” as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia” as stating that “President Trump tasks us with protecting our fellow Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” the grand jury in the case was in fact empaneled in August 2024. Additionally, Martin is only serving as the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and has not been confirmed by the U.S. Senate.