Background
Dr. Lieber, now 64, had been chairman of Harvard’s chemistry and chemical biology division. For his work on nanotechnology, he had been seen by some as a contender for the Nobel Prize.
Since 2008, prosecutors stated, his laboratory at Harvard had acquired analysis grants totaling $18 million from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.
But he additionally secretly accepted cash from China, which had established a authorities initiative, the Thousand Talents program, to realize entry to scientific information and experience, typically paying scientists lavishly.
When questioned about his involvement with Thousand Talents in 2018 by federal investigators, he denied it. He additionally didn’t report his earnings to the I.R.S.
But the Justice Department discovered that Dr. Lieber had a three-year contract with Thousand Talents, below which he agreed to ascertain a analysis lab at Wuhan University and to publish articles, set up worldwide conferences and apply for patents on the college’s behalf.
The college agreed to pay him as much as $50,000 a month as a wage and to supply dwelling bills of as much as $150,000.
At his trial he stated {that a} portion of his wage was deposited in a Chinese checking account. The relaxation, between $50,000 and $100,000, was paid in $100 payments.
“They would give me a package, a brown thing with some Chinese characters on it, I would throw it in my bag,” he stated on the trial. After returning dwelling, he stated, “I didn’t declare it, and that’s illegal.”
At his trial he confessed that cash was not the lure — it was the chance to advance his profession.
“This is embarrassing,” he stated at his trial. “Every scientist wants to win a Nobel Prize.”
His attorneys, noting that he has an incurable blood most cancers, had requested that he be sentenced to probation or dwelling confinement as an alternative of serving time in jail.
Why It Matters
Dr. Lieber’s conviction in December 2021 resulted from the China Initiative, an effort launched in 2018, below the Trump administration, to determine scientists suspected of sharing delicate data with China.
In early 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation stated it had greater than 2,000 open investigations associated to theft from China of knowledge and expertise from the United States.
But critics stated that the China Initiative had unfairly focused tutorial researchers of Asian descent. While the initiative led to the conviction of Dr. Lieber and different researchers, one other prosecution of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist, Gang Chen, was dismissed.
In February 2022, the Justice Department ended the hassle, with one official, Matthew G. Olsen, saying it “helped give rise to a harmful perception that the department applies a lower standard to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct related to that country or that we in some way view people with racial, ethnic or familial ties to China differently.”
Source: www.nytimes.com