Prosecutors on Jan. 31 arrested a former senior Federal Reserve advisor, accusing him of stealing trade secrets from the agency that could allow China to manipulate the U.S. market.
John Harold Rogers, 63, worked for 11 years as a senior advisor for the international finance division of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the main governing body for the U.S. central bank.
A federal indictment alleged that Rogers began working with Chinese conspirators since at least 2018. The Chinese handlers worked for the Chinese intelligence and security apparatus and posed as graduate students at a Chinese university, according to the filing.
Rogers, in the collaboration, allegedly solicited trade-secret information that included proprietary economic data sets, China tariff deliberations, and briefing books for specific board governors. He also allegedly solicited internal discussions and forthcoming announcements from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), a 12-member body consisting of the seven Federal Reserve board of governors, the New York Federal Reserve Bank president, and four of the remaining 11 Reserve Bank presidents that rotate on an annual basis.
The Federal Reserve’s international finance division is in charge of basic research, policy analysis, and reporting of areas such as foreign economic activity, U.S. trade and capital outflow, and developments in international financial markets and institutions, the agency’s website states.
Rogers is charged with conspiracy to commit economic espionage and with making false statements. A judge ordered Rogers to be held until a detention hearing on Feb. 4, a spokesperson from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington told The Epoch Times. The charges carry a total of 20 years in prison on top of up to $5 million in fines.
“Let this indictment serve as a warning to all who seek to betray or exploit the United States: law enforcement will find you and hold you accountable,” said interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Edward Martin, who President Donald Trump appointed minutes after taking office on Jan. 20.
FBI assistant director in charge, David Sundberg, said his agency aims to protect U.S. national security interests.
Meetings Under Another Purpose
One of the Chinese handlers, identified in the indictment as co-conspirator 1, presented himself as a graduate student at China’s Shandong University of Finance and Economics who was interested in learning about sensitive U.S. fiscal policy to benefit the eastern Chinese province. He approached Rogers in May 2013 after creating an email that he used almost exclusively with Rogers and a handful of Rogers’s associates, according to the document. When Rogers shared that he was beginning a new project with a Chinese co-author on monetary policy, the co-conspirator allegedly invited Rogers to visit his research institute, offering to cover his airfare and hotel on the trip.Court documents allege that Rogers took up the offer and visited China twice in 2017, telling the co-conspirator, on his second trip, that he wanted to stay in the same hotel, saying “That place was great!”
The co-conspirator purported to be working on an essay around May 2018 and requested information about the Federal Reserve’s policy measures and timetable, including its responses to China-related issues, the indictment alleges.
Rogers emailed his colleagues for input, including U.S.–China trade issues, Federal Reserve staff’s thinking on exchange rates, and views on the market-clearing price of the Chinese currency, prosecutors said. He boarded a Shanghai-bound flight days after. On May 10, 2018, Rogers emailed one document his colleague sent him to the co-conspirator, the indictment shows.
That September, the two began to discuss their meetings in more veiled terms, according to prosecutors. At Rogers’s request, they allegedly described those activities as classes so they would appear “legitimate in the eyes of the Fed,” prosecutors noted.
Between then and February 2022, they discussed hosting about a dozen such classes in Chinese hotel rooms, according to message records the investigators intercepted.
Some of these meetings focused on forecasting Federal Reserve policy trends. One of them, initiated in late November 2018, was titled “the trend of U.S. monetary policy in 2019,” according to the indictment. The Chinese co-conspirator, the filing said, asked for an “official fed statement and presentation from current FOMC members.”
The “topic is perfect,” Rogers allegedly responded. He emailed a colleague for the “most straightforward way of accessing” Federal Reserve’s forecast data, as far back as 1994, the prosecutors said.
The Chinese co-conspirator’s response indicates Rogers had discussed the issue during the earlier meeting.
“Aha, just like what we talked about at dinner,” the co-conspirator wrote, according to the court document.
The pair talked about setting up three more “classes” in Shanghai and Beijing to cover “how the Fed will shrink the balance-sheet in 2019” and the U.S. economic situation in the first half of 2019 in the following months, according to the federal filing.
On June 19, 2019, five days after Rogers flew to Beijing for one of the meetings, the Federal Reserve announced it wouldn’t cut rates but cut the word “patient” in describing the monetary policy outlook, a hint for future actions.
“Same as you predicted!” the co-conspirator allegedly wrote to Rogers.
Rogers allegedly obtained or attempted to access at least six trade secrets for Chinese officials, according to the indictment. Among them were a briefing book dated October 2018 titled “International Economic Topics”; summary and assessment of a European Central Bank announcement dated March 7, 2019, labeled sensitive; a sensitive June 6, 2019 document that contains briefing notes to the Federal Reserve board, and spreadsheets containing proprietary information from the board, according to prosecutors.
The filing alleged that Rogers obtained the board governor’s briefing book, which contained a bold red warning “do not disseminate,” from a colleague by stating it was for his personal use as a “concrete example of ‘information flow.’”
Against his colleague’s request, Rogers allegedly forwarded the document to his personal account, court documents note. Rogers, in October 2018, also allegedly sent internal files on trade policy uncertainty and U.S. investment to the Chinese co-conspirator.
Rogers denied his China ties when the Federal Reserve Board Office of Inspector General investigated in February 2020. Asked in a recorded interview whether he had shared restricted board information with anyone outside of the board, Rogers allegedly responded, “Never.”
He insisted that he had refused money from the Chinese co-conspirator, according to the indictment.
“I set them straight. Don’t put this money in front of me,” he was quoted as saying.
The pair’s connection apparently continued after that, prosecutors say.
In February 2022, the co-conspirator messaged Rogers, inviting him and his wife to Shandong’s Qingdao City for a “class,” the court filing said.
“All related expenses will be covered by us, and we can pay for the class,” the co-conspirator allegedly said.
It’s unclear how or if Rogers responded to the message. But in August 2023, investigators said, Rogers emailed his former colleagues still with the Federal Reserve Board and asked for two internal Excel spreadsheets.
In 2023, Rogers was paid approximately $450,000 as a part-time professor at a Chinese university, according to the DOJ.
