Former CIA Officer, Suspected of Revealing Classified Information to China, Works for Christie's Hong Kong

The arrest of former CIA officer who is suspected of spying for China has made headlines all over the news. The Value has learnt from a reliable source that this former CIA officer works for Christie's Hong Kong.

Jerry Chun Shing Lee (aka Zheng Cheng LI), a former CIA officer, was arrested at Kennedy Airport in New York on 15 January, the US Department of Justice said on Tuesday. He is charged with unlawful retention of classified information and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted.

Lee, 53, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is currently residing in Hong Kong. According to court documents, Lee served in the United States Army from 1982 to 1986 and joined the CIA as a case officer in 1994, maintained a Top Secret clearance and signed numerous non-disclosure agreements during his tenure at CIA. When he left CIA in 2007, "those who knew him said he left the agency disgruntled after his career plateaued", reported the New York Times.

In August 2012, Lee and his family left Hong Kong to return to the United States to live in northern Virginia. During his hotel stays in Hawaii and Virginia, FBI agents conducted court-authorized searches of Lee’s room and luggage, and found two notebooks with handwritten notes that contained classified information. The notebook contained classified information including true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA employees, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations and locations of covert facilities.

Two years before the FBI investigation, more than a dozen CIA informants were killed or imprisoned by the Chinese government, leading to one of the most disastrous failures of US intelligence in recent years.


The F.B.I. sought to determine if an insider had exposed sensitive information to the Chinese government or the Chinese government had hacked the CIA data and sources of communications. Lee is suspected of helping China to cripple the United States' intelligence operations in China.  


Reported by The New York Times, Lee is living in Hong Kong and working for a well-known auction house. He appeared in Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday and is being held there while awaiting transfer to Virginia.

The value has learnt from a reliable source that Lee is an employee at Christie's Hong Kong. He is responsible for internal duties in the back office and is therefore not widely-known by the general public.