Former FBI employee confesses to being 'agent of China'

A former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employee, Kun Shan Chun, with top secret security clearance, will face up to 10 years imprisonment after pleading guilty to being an agent of the Chinese Government.

Also known as Joey Chun, he was arrested by the FBI in March during an undercover operation, and appeared in a New York court on Monday, reports CNN.

The 46-year old confessed to providing "sensitive" FBI information to an individual with connections to the Chinese government on a number of occasions, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Originally born in China, Chun was a naturalized U.S. citizen who had been an employee of the FBI for 19 years. He was granted top security clearance by the FBI in 1998 as part of his job in the FBI's Technical Branch

According to the complaint, Chun tried to recruit an undercover agent to provide him with confidential information, which he said could be exchanged for cash if it was sent to his associates in China.

Chun pleaded guilty to one charge of acting in the United States as an agent of China without providing notice to the Attorney General.

According to the Justice Department, Chun transmitted several pieces of sensitive information including, disclosing information about the FBI's internal workings to a Chinese official.

In 2013, Chun sent the official a copy of the FBI organizational chart, with personnel names removed, and in 2015, he sent the same official in China photos of documents detailing surveillance technologies used by the FBI.

In a statement announcing the outcome, New York Southern District U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said, as an American who had worked as a foreign agent, Chun had "betrayed our nation."

"And when the perpetrator is an FBI employee, like Kun Shan Chun, the threat is all the more serious and the betrayal all the more duplicitous," he said.

Chun will be sentenced on December 2.