FBI Expands Cooperation with China and Russia to Combat International Crime

FBI Director Kash Patel said that over the past year, the bureau has established new law enforcement partnerships with China and Russia.

According to Reuters, the cooperation has included personnel exchanges: Chinese law enforcement officials visited the United States, while FBI agents traveled to China to work jointly on investigations and share operational intelligence.

As part of the agreement, FBI agents and Chinese law enforcement officers also conducted joint raids and arrests.

The FBI says these efforts are aimed at building partnerships to combat transnational crime, including fentanyl trafficking, cyber fraud, and the sexual exploitation of children.

Patel returned from a trip to Beijing in late July. According to FBI officials, a similar visit to Russia is tentatively scheduled for October.

In exclusive interviews with Reuters, Patel described the FBI’s initiatives with so-called “nontraditional partners” as selective and limited to specific types of transnational crime.

These partnerships, which are referred to internally as “task forces,” represent a significant departure from previous FBI practice.

They have also raised concerns within the broader U.S. counterintelligence community over the risks of sharing sensitive homeland security information with authoritarian governments that seek to undermine America’s economic and military strength.

In May, the FBI, China’s Ministry of Public Security, and Dubai Police jointly performed Operation Sand Dollar, a large-scale raid on a cyber fraud center in Dubai. According to the FBI, the operation resulted in the arrest of 300 people, the seizure of $300 million in assets, and the rescue of thousands of trafficking victims who had been forced to work at the scam center.

According to Chinese state media, in at least one case, a Chinese national accused of “serious violent crimes” was repatriated from the United States to China.

As previously reported, China has spent the past decade building numerous detailed mock-ups of U.S. military equipment and Taiwanese government buildings in its desert to practice strike operations.