A Quebec man charged in 2021 for unauthorized dealings with a Chinese company while employed at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has since 2020 served as an executive of that company, an aerospace firm that was recently
sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for aiding Russia in its war with Ukraine.
The
RCMP in December 2021 charged Wanping Zheng, now a former CSA employee, for exploiting his role as an engineer with the agency. Mr. Zheng allegedly engaged in unauthorized negotiations of agreements on the installation of satellite station facilities on behalf of Spacety China, officially known as Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute Co. LTD.
According to Mr. Zheng’s
LinkedIn profile, in which he goes by the name of James, he served as chief executive officer for Spacety’s Luxembourg division in January 2020, for one month, and in June that year became the vice-president of international business.
The company, based in Hunan Province in central China, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in January for providing synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery orders over locations in Ukraine to a Russia-based technology firm, Terra Tech. Those images were gathered in order to enable “combat operations in Ukraine” by the mercenary Wagner Group, according to a Jan. 26 Treasury Department
press release.
Sanctions also extended to Spacety China’s Luxembourg-based subsidiary. In February, the company was added to the U.S. Commerce Department’s
Entity List due to its involvement in activities “contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.”
The sanction “targets the infrastructure that supports battlefield operations in Ukraine, including producers of Russia’s weapons and those administering Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine,” the Treasury Department said.
“Today’s expanded sanctions on Wagner, as well as new sanctions on their associates and other companies enabling the Russian military complex, will further impede Putin’s ability to arm and equip his war machine,” Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said in the statement.
The Epoch Times contacted Spacety for comment from the company and Mr. Zheng, but didn’t hear back by press time.
Wanping Zheng
The RCMP confirmed to The Epoch Times on Aug. 9, that its investigation into Mr. Zheng’s case has concluded and that the case is now before a criminal court. The Public Prosecution Service of Canada also confirmed that his trial is set to begin on Sept. 18 for a duration of seven days.The Epoch Times had previously
reported that Mr. Zheng has led a number of “major Canadian national aerospace projects,” according to his profile on Spacety’s
Chinese-language website. His profile has since
been removed from the company website.
According to his LinkedIn page, Mr. Zheng had “participated in most of the recent Canadian space missions as a technical expert or a manager, such as the International Space Space (ISS), Radarsat 2, SciSat, MOST, Cassiope, NEOSSAT, M3MSat, and OSIRIS-Rex.”
Mr. Zheng, who was a resident of the Montreal suburb of Brossard, was arrested on Dec. 7, 2021, at age 61. He was subsequently released on a promise to appear in a court in Longueuil, Quebec, on Dec. 15, 2023.
According to
The Canadian Press, the charge sheet filed at the courthouse said his alleged crime took place between July 1, 2018, and May 30, 2019, at the CSA headquarters in Brossard and St−Hubert, as well as in Toronto, Ottawa, and elsewhere in Ontario and Quebec.
Kathy Han contributed to this report.
