Australia has named China in a court document as the foreign state under investigation by police in its first foreign interference investigation, though Beijing dismissed the allegation as an anti-China smear.
A document lodged in the High Court on Sept. 1 by the Australian Government Solicitor is the first official acknowledgement that the investigation into an alleged plot to influence an Australian politician centred on China.
The Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) have declined to comment on whether a raid on the offices of a New South Wales (NSW) state politician and his staffer on June 26 was related to China.
But the court filing stated the search warrant used by police identifies the foreign principal as the “Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)”.
