Photo credits: Charles Krupa/AP
On Tuesday (December 21), a Harvard University professor was convicted on all counts stemming from the concealment of his involvement in a Chinese-run recruitment effort.
Charles Lieber (pictured), 62, pleaded not guilty to two counts of filing fraudulent tax forms, two counts of making false statements, and two counts of failing to register a foreign bank account in Chinese territory.
After five days of deliberations in a federal court in Boston, the jury deliberated for two hours and 45 minutes before reaching a verdict.
Lieber’s defense attorney, Marc Mukasey, had claimed that the allegations were unfounded. He said that detectives did not retain any documents of their conversations with Lieber prior to his arrest.
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Prosecutors would be unable to prove Lieber behaved “knowingly, willfully, or voluntarily,” or made any materially false statement, he said. According to Mukasey, Lieber was not charged with illegally transmitting technology or proprietary information to China.
Prosecutors allege that Lieber, who was arrested in January, lied about his role in China’s Thousand Talents Plan, a program aimed at luring international technology and intellectual property experts to China, in order to protect his career and reputation.
According to prosecutors, Lieber denied his involvement throughout investigations by US authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, which had awarded him millions of dollars in research funding.
Prosecutors believe that Lieber concealed his income from the Chinese program, which includes $50,000 per month from Wuhan University of Technology, up to $158,000 in living expenses, and over $1.5 million in rewards.
They claim that in exchange for pay, Lieber agreed to publish papers, organize international conferences, and submit patent applications on behalf of the Chinese organization.
This is one of the most high-profile lawsuits to come out of the US Justice Department’s so-called “China Initiative.”
The campaign against Chinese economic espionage, which started in 2018, has been condemned as undermining academic research and amounted to racial profiling of Chinese scientists.
Source: Harvard Professor Found Guilty of Concealing His Links to China’s Government
