cryptogon.com

The indictment was handed up against Charles Lieber, 61, on two counts of making false statements to investigators, according to legal filings and US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling’s office.

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The professor, whom Harvard placed on paid administrative leave after his arrest, allegedly concealed his participation in China’s Thousand Talents program, which aims to recruit the world’s top scientists and academics and help that country make significant leaps in technology and innovation.

The US government has warned that the recruitment program is an effort by China to steal American proprietary information. Federal agencies are aggressively probing financial ties that American-funded scientists may have to foreign governments, especially China, and whether they and their institutions are appropriately disclosing those connections.

According the federal investigators, a professor at a Chinese university approached Lieber, who is a prolific inventor, in 2011. A few days later, Lieber traveled to China’s Wuhan University of Technology to sign a long-term agreement. When the terms were finalized, he would be paid $50,000 a month, $158,000 in living expenses, and $1.5 million to establish a research lab at the Chinese university.

But Lieber kept that secret from Harvard, according to federal prosecutors, and when questioned by Department of Defense investigators in 2018, denied he had ever participated in the Thousand Talents program.

Federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, require researchers who received grant funding to disclose significant financial conflicts of interest and foreign funding.