A Sydney businessman accused of selling secrets to China has claimed from prison that the case against him is a false police narrative based on no evidence and the prosecution “will fail”, embarrassing Australia. In his first public words written from prison, where he has been remanded for more than six months ahead of an expected trial, Alexander Csergo claimed that despite months of investigation prosecutors had found “no evidence of espionage, or classified or confidential information” being handed over. Csergo, 55, was arrested at his Bondi home in April…
Tag: Australian security and counter-terrorism
Australia news live: Optus network goes down across nation; trains grind to a halt in Melbourne
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Australia news live: Shorten labels Greens’ Senate walkout ‘political grandstanding’; Birmingham says Gaza child deaths a ‘terrible function of war’
From 39m ago Shorten labels Greens’ Senate walkout ‘political grandstanding’ Government services minister Bill Shorten has labelled the Greens decision to walk out of Senate question time yesterday as “political grandstanding”. Yesterday, the Greens stormed out of Senate question time to protest what they say is Albanese government inaction over the conflict in Gaza. You can read more from my colleague Paul Karp here: Speaking to the ABC just earlier, Shorten argued the Greens’ walk out doesn’t help “a single soul anywhere”: I think that is just political grand standing.…
Australia news live: fires in Queensland and NSW threaten homes amid strong winds, high temperatures
<gu-island name="KeyEventsCarousel" priority="feature" deferuntil="visible" props="{"keyEvents":[{"id":"6540db478f08dbed308c77d3","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":" Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ve got some of our overnight and breaking stories for you before my colleague Emily Wind gets settled in for the day. ","elementId":"5669eb8c-6020-4ee3-89ec-8a46b95d6103"},{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":" Our exclusive top story today reveals that ports giant DP World has paid no tax in Australia despite generating revenue of more than $4.5bn over eight years. A new report by the union-backed lobby group Cictar says that DP World’s top Australian subsidiary may have “artificially reduced profits” to…
Aukus will ‘get done’ despite jitters in Congress, Biden tells Albanese at White House meeting
Joe Biden has played down congressional jitters over the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine deal and has revealed he assured Xi Jinping that the countries involved are not aiming to “surround China”. The US president welcomed the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to the White House and insisted he was “confident that we’re going to be able to get the money for Aukus because it’s overwhelmingly in our interest”. “So the question is not if, but when,” Biden said during a joint press conference with Albanese in the rose garden on Wednesday…
Australia politics live: Marles warns of risks in ‘grave’ China clash; the ‘fables’ spread by the no campaign
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Australian businessman being used as ‘guinea pig’ for reckless foreign interference charge, lawyers say
More than six months after Sydney businessman Alexander Csergo was arrested on allegations he was providing sensitive material to Chinese agents, Australia’s attorney general has still not consented to his prosecution. Lawyers for Csergo say he is being used as a “guinea pig” on a never-before-proven charge, and will seek to have him released on bail after prosecutors secured more time to confirm the charge against him. Csergo, charged with one count of reckless foreign interference, is alleged to have swapped reports on business and politics with two Chinese handlers,…
Visiting professor used PhD students to gather intelligence for China, Asio boss alleges
The spy agency Asio says it has disrupted a plot by China’s intelligence services to “infiltrate a prestigious Australian research institution” with officials forcing an academic to leave the country before any harm was done. The Asio chief, Mike Burgess, provided broad details of the alleged plot while also accusing China of engaging in “the most sustained, scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history”. “It is unprecedented and unacceptable,” Burgess said during a press conference in California on Wednesday alongside counterparts from the US, the…
Bondi businessman accused of selling secrets to China can only be accused of plagiarism, lawyers argue
Lawyers for a Bondi businessman accused of selling Australian secrets to China say simple artificial intelligence tools used to check for plagiarism at universities verified his claim he only provided publicly available information. Alexander Csergo watched on via video link from Sydney’s Parklea prison on Wednesday as prosecutors told Downing Centre local court they would ask the federal attorney general’s department if it wanted to continue his case. Csergo has been held in prison on remand after he was arrested in Bondi in April. He was the first person in…
Australia news live: Dutton says opposition ‘won’t be departing’ from net zero, China welcomes PM’s confirmed visit
From 26m ago Paul Karp Dutton says opposition ‘won’t be departing’ from net zero In recent days some in the Nationals have agitated to abandon the commitment to net zero, through a motion to be debated at Nationals conference and comments from frontbencher Barnaby Joyce that the estimated cost of net zero was “utterly untenable”. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has just rejected that push, telling Radio National the Coalition “won’t be departing” from net zero. He said: No [it doesn’t concern me], there’s strong support for net zero. It’s…