Zoom Executive in China accused of disrupting Tiananmen memorials

The complaint, which was accompanied by an arrest warrant, accuses Xinjiang Jin of acting on behalf of Chinese law enforcement and intelligence officers to disrupt four Tiananmen commemorations earlier this year. The court documents identify Mr. Jin as an employee of a US-based telecommunications company. The company is Zoom, say people who are familiar with the matter.

Zoom said in a statement later Friday that it fully cooperated with US authorities, conducted an internal review, and fired the employee – without naming the employee – for violating company policy. Other employees have been placed on administrative leave, it said, as the investigation continues.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Jin is not in custody. Mr. Jin, who, according to court documents, also refers to ‘Julien Jin’, did not respond to an email sent to a Zoom business address with that name. No other contacts could be found for him.

The disruption of several commemorative video conferences about the Tiananmen platform crackdown on Zoom’s platform went public in June. Two prominent Chinese dissidents living in exile and a Hong Kong politician had their Zoom accounts blocked.

At the time, Zoom said it had done this to comply with a demand from the Chinese government, as such commemorations are illegal in China. The company said it “fell short” by not restricting compliance to avoid impacting users in Hong Kong and elsewhere outside of China, where such commemorations were permitted.

Friday’s complaint identifies Mr. Jin as instrumental in that blocking.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Jin Zoom’s “technical leader in security” was and worked to close at least four video meetings on the platform to commemorate the Chinese military attack on protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989, which killed at least hundreds of people. The commemorations were largely organized and attended by American participants, the complaint said.

Mr. Jin coordinated with Chinese government officials, including police and internal security officials, to identify meeting participants and disrupt meetings on US servers, prosecutors said. He teamed up with others to create fake email accounts to falsify evidence that meeting participants supported terrorism and distributed child pornography. He used this to convince Zoom executives to end meetings and suspend the hosts’ accounts, the complaint said.

The Chinese authorities used the information Mr. Jin provided to detain at least one person who planned to speak at a meeting, prosecutors said.

Mr. Jin, 39, is charged with conspiracy to commit inter-state harassment and unlawful conspiracy to hand over a means of identification. He is waiting for up to 10 years in prison.

Besides mr. Jin said US officials the case points to a pitfall for US internet companies trying to operate in China.

“It really highlights what it means when many technology companies will say, ‘we have to comply with local laws,'” said John Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s national security division. “It doesn’t just mean helping within China’s borders [China] suppress political speeches around the world, ”he said.

America’s social media titans like Facebook and Twitter have effectively been banned in China, where the communist government is scrutinizing all Internet traffic for content that is considered politically subversive and otherwise objectionable.

Founded in 2011, Zoom became an almost global success during the pandemic as people flocked to the free service to keep in touch with family and friends.

Its massive appeal has made managing content on its platform a much bigger and unexpected issue for the company that started out serving corporate clients.

The Chinese government blocked the use of Zoom in China in September 2019, and Zoom executives worked to pave the way for renewed permission to operate in the country, the complaint said.

To do that, Zoom agreed to migrate the data stores of one million “Chinese users” from the US to China, the document said.

In its statement, Zoom said the company’s CEO and other staff spoke with government agencies in 2019 about steps it could take to unblock the block. The plan, Zoom said, included having ID information and data stored in the country for Chinese users to comply with regulations.

Zoom said the company has not taken steps to develop technology to analyze meeting content in China, report illegal activity and shut down meetings.

Mr. Yuan is an American citizen who was born in China. Many of Zoom’s engineers have traditionally been based in China. Navigating both countries has proved challenging.

In April, security researchers found that under certain conditions the company was storing encryption keys – long strings of numbers and characters that can be used to access encrypted communications – on servers in China. The company said this was a mistake and took steps to make sure it didn’t happen again.

The company is “committed to the free and open exchange of ideas,” and strived to “aggressively anticipate and combat the ever-changing data security challenges,” said Zoom’s statement.

—Corinne Ramey contributed to this article.

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at [email protected] and Aaron Tilley at [email protected]