Over 10 years, Fed employees were offered contracts with Chinese talent recruitment programs, often including cash payments, in exchange for providing information on the U.S. economy and interest rate changes, according to an investigation by Republican staff members of the Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The country even threatened to imprison a Fed economist on a trip to Shanghai as apart of their efforts. The economist was detained in 2019, the report says. WSJ notes that it is unclear whether any "sensitive information was compromised", though we're not sure exactly how "sensitive" Fed information is to begin with. 

The investigation called it "a sustained effort by China, over more than a decade, to gain influence over the Federal Reserve and a failure by the Federal Reserve to combat this threat effectively."

Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke out against the report's findings: "Because we understand that some actors aim to exploit any vulnerabilities, our processes, controls, and technology are robust and updated regularly. We respectfully reject any suggestions to the contrary."

"We take seriously any violations of these robust information security policies," he continued, according to the report. 

A former Fed investigation identified 13 people of interest beginning in 2015. The Congressional investigation relied "heavily" on the Fed's findings for their report. One economist in the Fed system, who was fired for violating rules, was found to be close to a former employee who was alleged to have attempted to recruit members for the espionage network. 

That former "expressed a desire to maintain an inside information sharing relationship" and had ties to Chinese government-backed talent recruitment programs.