MPs have been put on high alert for China spying after they were targeted by fake headhunters.
MI5 has issued an alert about two individuals in China trying to ‘interfere with our processes and influence activity at Parliament’.
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle and his counterpart in the House of Lords, Lord McFall, have circulated a message to MPs.
Sir Lindsay said the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) was ‘relentless’ in ‘actively reaching out to individuals in our community’.
He added that they wanted to ‘collect information and lay the groundwork for long-term relationships, using professional networking sites, recruitment agents and consultants acting on their behalf’.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis told the House of Commons the Government is taking action to combat Chinese espionage.
He said there would be a ‘comprehensive package of measures’ to ‘disrupt and deter’ the threat, including a task force specifically geared at protecting politicians.
Millions of pounds will be invested in new secure systems, the minister added.
The alert names two headhunters Amanda Qiu, of BR-YR Executive Search, and Shirly Shen, of Internship Union, who were said to be using LinkedIn profiles to reach out on behalf of China’s MSS.
The MI5 alert also details how the Chinese intelligence service may try to recruit a target.
Sir Lindsay added: ‘It is of the utmost importance that we all understand how this activity happens and how to protect ourselves against it. We all have a responsibility to keep Parliament safe.’
The alert comes just weeks after MI5 warned Chinese spies are creating fake job adverts to trick UK civil servants into handing over secret information.
The Mail understands that the accused headhunters have no link to alleged China spies, Christopher Cash nor Christopher Berry, whose prosecution collapsed in September.
The two spies working for the Chinese intelligence services are said to have been ‘prolific’ in targetting parliamentary staff over a long period.
The headhunters have been tasked by Beijing to seek out civil servants in key roles hoping to trick them into sharing secret information on topics like UK government policy, military capability and geopolitical issues.
The Mail understands that Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen run teams of headhunters at BP-YR Executive Search and Internship Union, which act as a recruitment front for Chinese intellgence sending out a blizzard of job adverts hoping to snare Government staff.
While the initial contact may be on a job platform it will quickly move to communications on an encrypted platform.
Targets are then likely to experience increased requests for reports on non-public, exclusive and sensitive information, or to gather information from their networks and connections.
The practice usually involves payment through unconventional means such as cryptocurrency, or payment from accounts that do not share the company name.
Once hooked, victims can be enticed into flying to a non-Western country where they are directly pressed into spying for Beijing.
In a new escalation in Chinese espionage targeting Britain, hundreds of thousands of suspicious job adverts are appearing on online job platforms offering bumper salaries and tempting fees in exchange for ‘unique insight’ reports.
MI5 fears that scores of Britons may have fallen victim after being lured in by fake recruitment consultancies set up by Beijing.
In October the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), a branch of MI5 issued an alert warning that foreign intelligence services are daily posing bogus job adverts to target government staff, academics, think tank employees, private defence contractors and others.
False employment sites, bogus recruitment companies or spoofed legitimate companies being set up, all offering a blizzard of ‘too good to be true’ opportunities.
In some instances, British professionals are being offered as much as £2,000 for a single report on matters like foreign policy, defence and government insight.
MI5 chief Sir Kenneth McCallum hinted at the issue in a wide-ranging threat speech in October, saying that Britons should be wary of a ‘tempting online job advert in your sector [that] is just too good to be true’.
