By Michael Martina
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. corporate due diligence firm Mintz Group’s Beijing office was raided by authorities and five Chinese staff were detained, a source with the company told Reuters on Thursday.
The source for the New York-headquartered firm told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the company’s local legal counsel said the raid occurred on the afternoon of March 20, and that the employees were being held incommunicado somewhere outside of Beijing.
Mintz and the Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Last Monday (March 20th) late in the day, the office was raided and all five of the staff members – they are all PRC (People’s Republic of China) citizens – were detained,” the person said.
The source said the company was not aware of the reasons for the raid and had not had contact with authorities, but was assessing the potential for data breaches and was alerting clients.
The company website says Mintz Group has 18 offices around the world and hundreds of employees.
Western due diligence companies have gotten into trouble with Chinese authorities before. British corporate investigator Peter Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng, who ran risk consultancy ChinaWhys, were detained in 2013 following work they did for British pharmaceuticals giant GSK.
(Reporting by Michael Martina, additional reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
