According to prosecutors at a San Francisco court, California native Walter Liew stole trade secrets of chemical company DuPont Co and gave them to a company in China.
Bloomberg said Liew, who emigrated to the US in 1980, has been formally charged with trade secret theft, economic espionage and conspiracy. Liew is among the over 20 people who had been filed espionage-related charges by the US in recent years. The White House under President Barack Obama said that Chinese spy agencies have launched an industrial espionage campaign meant to obtain US technology secrets for its biotechnology, telecommunications, clean energy and nanotechnology industries.
Assistant US Attorney Peter Axelrod said in his closing arguments after the five-week trial that Liew turned over a DuPont secret technology which involves the manufacturing of titanium dioxide to Pangang Group Co. Bloomberg said the titanium dioxide is the chemical term for the white pigment that is being used in plastics, paint and paper. Liew was reportedly urged by then secretary general of China Luo Gan to obtain trade secrets beneficial to the mainland. Axelrod said that when Liew and an ex-DuPont engineer were found out in 2001, neither didn't come clean about it.
Prosecutors at the trial said that Liew benefited from the trade secrets he obtained from DuPont. Axelrod said that Liew and his consulting company in Oakland entered into $28 million worth of contracts to create a design for Pangang's titanium dioxide plant and used the trade secrets he stole from the chemical company in his work.
Stuart Gasner, Liew's attorney, claimed that the patents his client used in the blueprints for the plant were publicly available information and not trade secrets as prosecutors have claimed. Moreover, Liew's camp produced an unnamed letter to DuPont by a fired ex-employee of Liew's company, which Gasner said spurred the federal investigation.
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