KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 22): Malaysian national Leonard Glenn Francis, a military contractor better known as Fat Leonard, could be a useful Chinese asset.

In a tweet on Wednesday (Sept 21), American journalist Tom Wright said: “Fat Leonard could be a useful Chinese asset. Beijing got kompromat/top secret docs from Leonard years ago.

“But Leonard knows the inner workings of the Navy and might still be of worth,” he said without details.

Francis has been on the run since Sept 4 after cutting off his GPS monitoring ankle bracelet.

Earlier this week, Wright and his colleague Bradley Hope through their global journalism and production studio Project Brazen said Francis had allegedly made it to Venezuela, and may be headed to Brazil.

The duo said that they had "information" on Francis being in the country after he cut off his GPS monitoring ankle bracelet and fled house arrest in San Diego, California.

Francis currently has a US$40,000 (RM182,696) bounty on his head by the US Marshals Service.

Francis was arrested in San Diego in 2013 and pleaded guilty in 2015, admitting to bribing numerous high-ranking naval officers and swindling the Navy out of at least US$35 million in overcharges.

He was alleged to have bribed a large number of uniformed officers of the US Seventh Fleet with at least a half million dollars in cash, plus travel expenses, luxury items, and prostitutes, in return for classified material about the movements of US ships and submarines, confidential contracting information, and information about active law enforcement investigations into Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

Francis then "exploited the intelligence for illicit profit, brazenly ordering his moles to redirect aircraft carriers to ports he controlled in Southeast Asia so he could more easily bilk the Navy for fuel, tugboats, barges, food, water and sewage removal".

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