A fugitive claiming to have given the FBI information about the Biden family’s business dealings in China faces decades in prison for alleged arms trafficking and other allegations involving Iran.
On Monday (July 10), according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, Gal Luft, a 57-year-old dual citizen of the United States and Israel, was charged with working as an unregistered agent of China and attempting to facilitate the sale of Iranian oil in defiance of sanctions.
The indictment also accuses Luft of hiring and compensating a former senior U.S. government official in 2016 on behalf of persons headquartered in China without filing the legal paperwork to become a foreign agent.
Although the prosecution withheld the former official’s identity, they claimed he worked as an adviser to then-President-elect Donald Trump.
Luft allegedly pressured the adviser to promote policies that favored China, including by writing comments that were published in Chinese media under the adviser’s identity.
Prosecutors revealed that Luft, detained in February in Cyprus on charges he racked up in the U.S., was released on bond while awaiting extradition. However, he left the country, and his current whereabouts are unknown.
Monday’s indictment followed the New York Post publishing a 14-minute video of Luft, shot at an undisclosed location, in which he alleged he was detained in Cyprus to prevent him from testifying before the House Oversight Committee about claims that a source with connections to the Chinese military had offered the Biden family bribes.
Luft asserted in the video that he had provided these details to the FBI and Department of Justice during a meeting in March 2019 in Brussels.
