Australia-China social queen on bribery charge By Daniel Flitton, John Garnaut and Chris Vedelago Sheri Yan is accused by US prosecutors of making hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs to a diplomat at the United Nations.
The queen of the Australia-China social scene has been charged in New York with funnelling almost $1 million in bribes to the president of the United Nations General Assembly.
Sheri Yan - who had deep connections in the Australian foreign policy establishment and shuttled regularly between luxurious apartments in Canberra, Beijing and New York - remains in a United States prison before a bail hearing on Friday. 
She and her husband, Roger Uren, a media executive and former Australian intelligence analyst who was once tipped to be Kevin Rudd's ambassador to Beijing, have long been a fixture at Australian embassy events in Beijing. The pair recently moved their family base from Beijing to the Canberra suburb of Kingston, where they keep a valuable collection of Chinese classic and erotic art.
Underlining her deep ties to Australia, Ms Yan was once also paid to act as a lobbyist by the ABC in her native China when the public broadcaster made an ultimately futile effort to secure local broadcasting rights for its overseas television channel Australia Network.
She used her high-level connections in Australia and China to act as a go-between.
Her office and online business profiles were plastered with photographs such as an encounter with former Labor leader Bob Hawke and billionaire Frank Lowy.
"You can trust her," reads a glowing endorsement from Greg Rudd, brother of the former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, posted on Ms Yan's LinkedIn page.
"She's well connected in all jurisdictions and understands what works and what doesn't work. ... Most important she is a woman of high morals and principle ... " But Ms Yan, also known as Shiwei Yan, was arrested last week and accused by US prosecutors of making hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs to John Ashe, then a diplomat from the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda.
The money is said to be part of a conspiracy to curry favour for unnamed Chinese "security" and "media" companies, working across Macau, the Caribbean and Kenya.
Ms Yan is accused of making several large transfers to Mr Ashe, with US investigators citing private emails from Google and Yahoo accounts, obtained under warrant. In one email from 2012, Ms Yan is alleged to have written to Mr Ashe: "Dear John, a quick note to let you know that I will send first $300,000 to the account this week". Mr Ashe later responded that would "start the conversation", it is claimed.
Mr Ashe was elected to a one-year term as president of the General Assembly beginning in 2013.
About the same time Ms Yan is accused of making monthly payments of $20,000 to him under the guise of a non-governmental organisation she headed that was known as the "Global Sustainability Foundation".
Prominent Melbourne businessman Phil Scanlan, the founder of the elite Australian- American Leadership Dialogue, initially was listed on an advisory board for Global Sustainability Foundation, along with Australian insurance lawyer Ian Hutchinson.
Mr Scanlan could not be reached for comment, but Mr Hutchinson said he was "absolutely bewildered" by the criminal allegations against Ms Yan.
"I know Sheri very well and I'd be awfully surprised if they are true. "I think she's a woman of integrity and honesty," he said.
Fairfax Media does not suggest any wrongdoing by Mr Scanlan or Mr Hutchinson.
Ms Yan, 57, is the daughter of a celebrated Chinese artist who, she said, worked with the People's Liberation Army's cultural troupe.
She met Mr Uren when he was working at the Australian embassy in Washington in the 1980s while she was working for China Radio International.
Ms Yan helped Mr Uren research his well- regarded book about a reviled Chinese intelligence chief, The Claws of the Dragon: Kang Sheng - The Evil Genius Behind Mao.
Former Australia Network chief Bruce Dover said he was introduced to Ms Yan in 2005 by her husband and she was later paid around $5000 per month as part of a bid by the ABC to secure broadcasting rights in the tightly controlled Chinese market.
"After about six months I wondered what we were getting," Mr Dover said. "It was all talk and not a lot of progress, and we parted ways."