The Chinese businessman who has taken over Scott Morrison's WeChat account says he bought it because he wanted a platform with lots of followers and insists the transaction had nothing to do with politics.
Several Coalition MPs have vowed to boycott the massive Chinese language messaging app after it was revealed that the Prime Minister's account had been taken over by a Chinese company.
The new account is named "Australian-Chinese New Life" and promises to provide tips to new arrivals from China.
The ABC has been told the government repeatedly tried to regain control of the account but WeChat's parent company Tencent refused to respond to its requests.
The chair of parliament's powerful intelligence committee, James Paterson, blamed the Chinese government and said the episode was evidence of foreign interference in Australia's domestic politics.
Huang Aipeng, the chief executive of Fuzhou 985 Information Technology, which now controls the account, told the ABC that he bought the account in November last year from its original owner, a Chinese national from Fuzhou who is registered only as Mr Ji.
Mr Morrison's account had some 75,000 followers and Mr Huang said it was this fact that convinced him to buy the account from Mr Ji.
"He [Mr Ji] didn't tell me who was using the account," said Mr Huang.
"I don't even know who [Scott] Morrison is, I saw the account has a lot of followers, so we bought it."
He also said was planning to delete all the content posted by Mr Morrison and would use the account to promote other material instead.
Mr Huang would not say how much he paid for the account and said he would not hand it back to the Prime Minister's Office, because the transfer of ownership had been approved by WeChat.
The ABC has been unable to contact Mr Ji and does not know why he made the sale or whether he did so willingly.
Like several other Western politicians, Mr Morrison's office set up a WeChat account through a Chinese agency.
The agency used a Chinese national – in this case Mr Ji — as the account operator, in order to circumvent WeChat's regulations, which do not allow foreign nationals to operate public accounts.
WeChat's rules also state that "the initial registration applicant shall not … permit any non-initial registration applicant to use the Weixin [Wechat] account."
The ABC has previously identified 12 Australian politicians with WeChat accounts registered in other people's names in China, including government ministers.
Mr Morrison's WeChat public account was opened by Mr Ji in January 2019 and was used to deliver political messaging to Chinese Australian voters.
Fergus Ryan, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said it was "risky and ill-advised" for the Prime Minister's Office to register a Chinese national for the account but said it would still be best for both Labor and the Coalition to simply boycott WeChat because of the risk of censorship on the platform.
Selling an account is also against the rules governing WeChat, although it is still a relatively common practice in China.
Robert Potter, founder of Canberra-based cyber security firm Internet 2.0, said the reasons why the account was sold or purchased were less important than the behaviour of Tencent.
"Selling the account is against the Terms of Service of WeChat. It should have been a simple account ownership question for Tencent to resolve, particularly for a high-profile account like the Prime Minister of Australia," Mr Potter said.
"When Tencent did not return the account, they made a corporate decision to de-platform the Prime Minister, which will have a domestic political impact."
He also pointed out that Tencent was quick to move when it temporarily blocked Mr Morrison's account in late 2020 amid a furious political dispute over an image of an Australian soldier posted on social media by Chinese diplomats
"We know Tencent can move quickly on these things because of how fast they censored the account previously," he said.
A spokesman for Tencent said there had been no hack of the Prime Minister's account and "based on our information, this appears to be a dispute over account ownership".
"The account in question was originally registered by a PRC [Chinese] individual and was subsequently transferred to its current operator, a technology services company," they said.
"[This] will be handled in accordance with our platform rules."
