Eight leaders or members of a Chinese hacking company have been charged alongside two Chinese law enforcement officers in a global cyberespionage campaign that targeted dissidents, news organizations and U.S. agencies

One indictment charges officials with a private hacking company known as I-Soon, whose officials conducted a sweeping array of breaches around the world as part of what U.S. officials say was a broad intelligence-gathering operation.

The targets were in some cases directed by China’s Ministry of Public Security — two law enforcement officers were also charged — but in other instances the hackers acted at their own initiative and tried to sell the stolen information to the government afterward, the indictment says. The company charged the government the equivalent of between approximately $10,000 and $75,000 for each email inbox it successfully hacked, officials said.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington suggested that the allegations were a “smear” and said, “We hope that relevant parties will adopt a professional and responsible attitude and base their characterization of cyber incidents on sufficient evidence rather than groundless speculation and accusations.”