Global Courant 2023-04-27 02:23:27
Background
Dr. Lieber, now 64, had been chairman of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology. For his work in nanotechnology, he was seen by some as a contender for the Nobel Prize.
Prosecutors said his Harvard lab had received research grants totaling $18 million since 2008 from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.
But he also secretly accepted money from China, which had created a government initiative called the Thousand Talents program to access scientific knowledge and expertise, often paying scientists handsomely.
When questioned by federal investigators in 2018 about his involvement with Thousand Talents, he denied it. He also did not report his income to the tax authorities
But the Justice Department found that Dr. Lieber had a three-year contract with Thousand Talents, in which he agreed to establish a research lab at the University of Wuhan and publish articles, organize international conferences, and apply for patents on behalf of the school.
The university agreed to pay him up to $50,000 a month as salary and cover living expenses up to $150,000.
At his trial, he said part of his salary was deposited into a Chinese bank account. The rest, between $50,000 and $100,000, was paid in $100 bills.
“They gave me a package, a brown thing with some Chinese characters on it, and I threw it in my bag,” he said at the trial. After returning home, he said, “I didn’t report it, and that’s illegal.”
At his trial, he confessed that money wasn’t the bait – it was the chance to advance his career.
“This is embarrassing,” he said at his trial. “Every scientist wants to win a Nobel Prize.”
His lawyers, noting that he has an incurable blood cancer, had asked that he be sentenced to probation or house arrest instead of serving a prison sentence.
Why it matters
The conviction of Dr. Lieber in December 2021 was due to the China Initiative, an effort launched in 2018 under the Trump administration to identify scientists suspected of sharing sensitive information with China.
In early 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had more than 2,000 ongoing investigations related to theft from China of information and technology from the United States.
But critics said the China initiative had unfairly targeted academic researchers of Asian descent. While the initiative led to the conviction of Dr. Lieber and other researchers, another prosecution of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist, Gang Chen, was dismissed.
In February 2022, the Justice Department terminated the effort, with an official, Matthew G. Olsen, saying it “helped create a damaging perception that the Department is applying a lower standard to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct related to that country or that we somehow view people with racial, ethnic or family ties to China differently.”
