Suspect Relished Her Local, Chinese Ties

In her spacious San Marino home, decorated with Chinese paintings and art objects, Katrina Leung held numerous fund-raisers for politicians, including former Mayor Richard Riordan and Councilman John Ferraro.

Her house, with two stone lions in front and a pool and guest house in the back, has been the setting for entertaining important guests from China on their visits to Los Angeles.

Leung, who is better known in the Chinese immigrant community by her Chinese name, Chan Man Yin, speaks fluent English, Mandarin and Cantonese. She has relished talking about being well-connected with important people in America and China.

When Deng Xiao-ping was China’s “paramount leader,” Leung told a reporter with pride that his daughter had been her house guest.

She is a woman who seemed to live dangerously, said a prominent Asian American community leader who has known her for many years. Like others, he spoke only on condition that his name not be used.

“She made it known that she had a special relationship with China, a special relationship with American politicians and a special relationship with the FBI,” he said.

Whenever she organized community functions, she included FBI officials, he said, and introduced them.

“There would be an FBI table, and I’d wonder, what are these FBI officials doing at a Chinese community event?” the community leader said.

Another prominent Chinese American businessman who asked not to be identified said Wednesday that he remembers Leung, at several community functions, introducing James Smith, the FBI agent who is now accused of having allowed her access to secret documents, as “my good friend from the FBI.”

As president of the Los Angeles-Guangzhou Sister City Committee, Leung had ample chance to make connections with local leaders and China.

In 1998, Leung accompanied Riordan on a trip to China. “She seemed to know all the high-level officials,” said Peter Woo, who went on the trip. Woo, president of Mega Toys, was president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles at the time.

“Katrina acted as if she were an unofficial ambassador,” said another Asian American, who also went on the trip.

When Mayor James K. Hahn visited China last year, Leung showed up at the St. Regis Hotel in Beijing where the delegation was staying, although she was not part of the group, according to one delegation member.

“She made it known that, when you needed to do business with China, you had to go through her,” said a prominent local Chinese American business leader, who frequently travels to China.

Leung, who came to the United States in 1963 as a high school student, said her grandfather came to Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th century, but that the family later returned to China.

She is a self-described venture capitalist, with a degree in architectural design from Cornell and an MBA from the University of Chicago. She is married to Kam Leung, a biochemist with a PhD, and they have a son.