Chinese authorities arrested Christian missionary Peter Hahn near the China-North Korea border on Friday.

The 74-year-old Korean-American was detained at the end of November and was charged with embezzlement and possession of fake receipts, his Shanghai-based lawyer Zhang Peihong told the Associated Press.

“The charges leveled against him are just excuses,” Peihong said, who alleged they were part of a larger crackdown by Chinese authorities on Christian nonprofits in the area.

Hahn, a naturalized U.S. citizen who fled from North Korea years ago, was the head of a Christian aid agency and set up a vocational school, which served North Koreans in the Chinese border town of Tumen. The school was shut down in July.

Both Hahn’s lawyer and his wife, Eunice, told Reuters that more than a decade ago Hahn had helped North Korean defectors, but that he had stopped doing so.

In August, Canadian Christian couple, Kevin and Julia Garratt, who had lived in the border town of Dandong for decades and had opened a coffee shop in 2008, were detained on suspicions of stealing state secrets, according to the Wall Street Journal.