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 was ‘relentless’ in ‘actively reaching out to individuals in our community’, and 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’.
MI5 has issued an alert about two individuals in China trying to ‘interfere with our processes and influence activity at Parliament’ (file picture of House of Commons)
Security Minister Dan Jarvis will address the House of Commons shortly on measures the government is taking to combat Chinese espionage.
It is understood that he will not name the two individuals involved, who are said to be in China.
But the alert names two headhunters Amanda Qiu (BR-YR Executive Search) and Shirly Shen (Internship Union), who are both known to be using LinkedIn profiles to reach out on behalf of China’s MSS, the email said.
The MI5 alert 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.
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’.
