US prosecutor says Fed data was passed to China — CNBC

In the United States, District of Columbia prosecutor Jeanine Pirro stated that former senior Federal Reserve adviser John Harold Rogers had secretly passed sensitive Fed information to Chinese spies for years. The 65-year-old economist was arrested in January 2025, days before a planned trip to China with his wife, a Chinese citizen, and their six-year-old daughter.

As CNBC reports, U.S. authorities believe Rogers passed data to a person who went by the name Hamming Li. The U.S. government claims that this person's real name is Jin Chuan and that he is a Chinese spy. Rogers first met him at a conference in Shanghai in 2013.

Help with travel and personal matters

According to the outlet, Li stayed in contact with Rogers, sent gifts and arranged his lectures at Chinese universities. When Rogers began a relationship with Chinese citizen Yu Liu, known as Yu Yu, Li helped him with travel, visa documents, financing and organizing a wedding in Hong Kong in 2018.

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Rogers later told Fed investigators that Li was well informed about all matters and acknowledged that he was deeply grateful to him for help with his relationship and family circumstances. At the same time, Yu Liu's connection to Chinese authorities has not been established. CNBC reported that she did not respond to the outlet's questions.

Positions of the prosecution and defense

According to the prosecution, Li became increasingly interested over time in the Fed's internal operations, arranged Rogers' regular trips to China and sent him questions about U.S. monetary policy, the dollar exchange rate, China's financial liberalization and the trade policy of Donald Trump's administration.

During the 2026 trial, federal prosecutor Nicholas Gantner told jurors that the case involved money, manipulation, secret meetings and deception. Pirro stated that Rogers had passed sensitive information to Chinese spies for years and lied to investigators and under oath. Rogers' defense insisted that he had not provided China with valuable information and that the questions sent to him concerned publicly available topics in international finance and macroeconomics.