Lawyer for jailed China consultant warns about spy law

More Australian businesspeople engaging with China face being jailed on foreign interference charges while the drums of "foreign antipathy" beat, barrister Bernard Collaery says.

Communications and technology infrastructure consultant Alexander Csergo was remanded in prison after a Sydney court heard he recklessly assisted suspected Chinese spies while living and working in Shanghai in 2021.

He allegedly received cash in envelopes for handwritten reports on various Australian matters, then returned to Australia this year with a "shopping list" of spying priorities drawn up for him by the Chinese agents.

The Sydney magistrate that denied Csergo bail said the allegations might later fall apart but so far formed a very strong case.

Mr Collaery, a former ACT attorney-general and prominent voice on civil liberties who represented Csergo in court on Monday, said it showed the "drums of foreign antipathy" were coming down into NSW courts.

"We're going to see more of these cases, there will be more people," he said outside court.

"(They won't be) providing consultancy services in the United States or Britain, Canada, Brazil, Israel or in the Middle East.

"It will mostly be China and it will be about the drums of war echoing out of Canberra."

Csergo's case is the second prosecution in the five years since the federal government added foreign interference to the commonwealth criminal code.

Mr Collaery described his client as an eminent Australian businessman with a clean record who'd been jailed for providing open-source information in English for translation "to, as it happens, China".

Similar business figures consulting on matters that may relate to Australia's foreign influences or national security could be guilty of foreign influence, he said.

"This is exactly what my profession and particularly the Law Council warned about," he said outside court.

"This is an issue of absolute civil liberties."

Csergo, a former Waverley College athletics captain and holder of a bachelor's degree in science, began working in China in 2002 after time at Telstra and Hyatt International.

He went on to work with a large American ad agency, led a data analytics infrastructure build for Shanghai Volkswagen and later helped develop systems for China Telecom and French advertiser JCDecaux.

The consultant's reports to the apparent spies were compiled from publicly sourced information, plus Csergo's own creative efforts, and was nothing close to espionage, Mr Collaery told the 55-year-old's bail hearing.

But federal prosecutors say he liaised with two other individuals.

He also maintained extensive contact with the apparent spies over years, despite telling ASIO in the past month that he long believed the pair were working for the Ministry of State Security, the court was told.

Magistrate Michael Barko accepted Csergo was well educated, sophisticated and worldly with experience in business life who had travelled the world and had close connections in Australia, China and Japan.

His connections to the Chinese state however made him too great a risk of fleeing the country before trial.

"There is no issue about him being an ignorant traveller, a holiday-maker, making a quick buck," Mr Barko said.

"That's a matter in favour subjectively for release.

"But the other side of the coin, for the Commonwealth, is that is the very reason why someone should be circumspect."

The magistrate stressed Csergo was entitled to the presumption of innocence and the bail hearing wasn't determining facts of the case.

Csergo is yet to plead, and returns to court in June.