A Chinese police station set up to spy on the country’s nationals in Lower Manhattan is run by a US charity that is on an IRS blacklist, The Post has learned.
The non-profit America ChangLe Association NY Inc. owns and operates the “service station” located above a noodle shop on the third floor of 107 East Broadway on the Lower East Side, according to public filings.
In May, the IRS yanked the group’s tax-exempt status for its failure to submit tax filings for three straight years, according to public records.
The non-profit, which was incorporated in New York in 2013 and listed its charitable mission as a “social gathering place for Fujianese people,” paid $1.3 million three years later for the suite of offices that houses the Fuzhou Police Overseas Chinese Affairs bureau, filings show.
The Manhattan station is part of a web of more than 100 such law enforcement offices set up around the world by the People’s Republic of China, ostensibly to help Chinese nationals renew their government-issued identification and drivers’ licenses.
But the stations have more “sinister” purposes, such as spying on the Chinese diaspora for the Chinese Communist Party, according to a recent whistle-blower report.
“Openly labeled as overseas police service stations … they contribute to ‘resolutely cracking down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities involving overseas Chinese,'” according to a September report by Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based human rights group that documents Chinese repression around the world.