Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard University’s chemistry and chemical biology section, is unveiled from John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston on Jan. 30, 2020.
Jonathan Wiggs | The Boston Globe via Getty Pictures
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department introduced the indictment of a Harvard professor right after he allegedly created phony statements to federal authorities with regards to his function at Wuhan University of Technological know-how in China.
Dr. Charles Lieber, 61, the former Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Division, was arrested in January and is slated to be arraigned in federal courtroom in Boston at a later on date. The cost of generating untrue statements offers for a sentence of up to 5 several years in jail, 3 a long time of supervised launch and a high-quality of $250,000.
“It is alleged that, unbeknownst to Harvard College, starting in 2011, Lieber became a ‘Strategic Scientist’ at Wuhan University of Technological know-how in China,” the Justice Office claimed in a Tuesday assertion.
“He afterwards became a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Skills System from at least 2012 by 2015. China’s Thousand Talents Strategy is one particular of the most popular Chinese talent recruitment strategies designed to appeal to, recruit, and cultivate higher-stage scientific expertise in furtherance of China’s scientific enhancement, financial prosperity and countrywide security,” the assertion additional, indicating that the Chinese would “normally reward people for stealing proprietary information and facts.”
Wuhan University of Technologies allegedly paid Lieber a income of up to $50,000 for each thirty day period and covered his residing bills of close to $158,000. He was also awarded more than $1.5 million to build a investigation lab at the faculty. In return, Lieber was obligated to work for no less than nine months out of a yr.
At the exact time, Lieber’s research firm acquired far more than $15 million in grants from the Countrywide Institutes of Well being and Office of Defense. These grants required the disclosure of all sources of exploration aid, prospective economic conflicts of interest and all international collaboration.
The coronavirus originated close to the metropolis of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province and has due to the fact activated a worldwide pandemic that has strike the U.S. more challenging than any other state. Much more than 1.96 million instances and at least 111,375 fatalities have so far been counted in the U.S., data from Johns Hopkins University present.
