Aug 5 - FBI Director Kash Patel says he has forged new law enforcement partnerships with China and Russia, two longtime U.S. rivals, over the past year in hopes of gaining allies in combating transnational crime including fentanyl, cyber fraud and child sexual exploitation.

The partnerships have involved personnel exchanges in which Chinese law enforcement officials have visited the United States and FBI agents have traveled to China to work on cases together and share intelligence. Separately, FBI and Chinese officers have carried out joint raids and arrests under the arrangement.

Patel returned from a trip to Beijing in late July, and a similar trip to Russia has been tentatively planned for October, according to FBI officials.

In exclusive interviews with Reuters, Patel described the FBI's initiatives with what he called "non-traditional partners" as selective and limited to specific types of transnational crimes such as global child pornography networks and cyber scam centers that prey on Americans.

The partnerships, known internally as "working groups," represent a major break with the past and have raised concerns within the broader counterintelligence community about the risks posed by sharing sensitive domestic security information with authoritarian regimes working to undermine the United States economically and militarily around the world.

In May, the FBI, China's Ministry of Public Security and Dubai police worked together in "Operation Sand Dollar," a major raid on a cyber scam center in Dubai that led to 300 arrests, $300 million seized and thousands of trafficked workers freed, the FBI said. In at least one case, a suspect inside China who was accused of "serious violent crimes" was repatriated to the United States, according to Chinese state media.

U.S. officials have long portrayed Russia and China as exporters of crime instead of potential allies in combating it, not to mention sources of espionage aimed at American interests worldwide.

Patel, appointed by President Donald Trump, said such risks can be managed.

"They are both new an...