Was he secretly working for China? This is what he told us.

Not long after we first met, the man said that if Australia was looking for Chinese spies, he was exactly the type of person they would be looking at – but authorities would never ‘dare say I’m Chinese intelligence’ .

Given the anti-China fervor in Australia, he acknowledged he might appear suspicious. Why wouldn’t he get in trouble with the authorities? He believed that it would be embarrassing for Australia to accuse him of espionage because he had been an active member of a major political party.

His confidence was absolutely and completely misplaced. Less than two years later, in 2020, he became the first person to be charged under Australia’s broad foreign interference laws. He was accused of acting on behalf of Beijing.

Who was the suspect?

Di Sanh “Sunny” Duong, 68, was born and raised in Vietnam. He was among hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese who fled that country in the 1970s. He settled in Australia and set up a gravestone-making business, secured a middle-class life and became enmeshed in local Chinese community groups.

I first interviewed him in 2019 and quickly realized that Mr. Duong was prone to bragging – about his travels, about his family and about his status in society, so much so that it was difficult to take him seriously.

What did he do?

The case against Mr Duong was not about what he did, but about what he intended to do. Mr. Duong had ties to the Chinese Communist Party, prosecutors said. He had invited an Australian government minister to a charity event, they added, with the intention of one day influencing him on Beijing’s behalf.

At the trial, the jury was presented with two versions of Mr Duong: was he a shrewd operator pushing the Chinese agenda in Australia, as the prosecution wanted, or was he, as the defense claimed, a bombastic braggart?

What was the verdict?

Mr. Duong did not testify in court. But while the trial was underway, he met me in a pub a stone’s throw from the courthouse to share his story.

He gave bizarre and convoluted reasons for the actions around which prosecutors built their case. One mind-boggling episode involved how Mr. Duong thought he was in contact with a Chinese intelligence officer, but later concluded, thanks to a TV program, that the official was not a spy. One thing was clear: Mr Duong remained adamant that he had never done anything against Australian interests.

The jury disagreed. In December he was found guilty of preparing or planning an act of foreign interference. At the end of last month, a judge sentenced him to two years and nine months in prison. Mr Duong is expected to spend a year behind bars.