An eight count indictment has come down on Gal Luft with crimes related to willful failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, arms trafficking, Iranian sanctions violations and other offenses. According to a release by the Justice Department, the defendant was charged Nov. 1, 2022, and taken into custody in the Republic of Cyprus Feb. 17.
"As alleged, Gal Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and co-head of a Maryland think tank, engaged in multiple, serious criminal schemes," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in the release. "He subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement.
"As the charges unsealed today reflect, our office will continue to work vigorously with our law enforcement partners to detect and hold accountable those who surreptitiously attempt to perpetrate malign foreign influence campaigns here in the United States,” Williams added, according to the release.
Luft first engaged in a scheme with others to serve as agents of Chinese-based principals inside the U.S. while evading the requirement to register as a foreign agent per American law, the release said. As part of the scam, Luft consented to discreetly hire and compensate a former senior U.S. government official on behalf of principals headquartered in China while working as the co-director of a non-profit think tank out of Maryland.
To publicly support specific policies with regard to China without Luft or "Individual-1" filing a registration statement as an agent of a foreign principal with the U.S. Attorney General would be a violation of Foreign Agents Registration Act, the release reported. This includes in 2016 while the former official was a senior advisor to then-President-elect Donald Trump.
In the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Luft and a co-conspirator, who was a Chinese national who worked for a Chinese non-governmental organization connected to a Chinese energy company among other things, produced a written "dialogue" between CC-1 and Individual-1, where Luft wrote Individual-1's responses and added information that was favorable to China, the release said. The debate was posted online in a Chinese publication and given to a journalist and professors at several American colleges.
