A US man convicted of stealing trade secrets and selling
them to a Chinese state-owned company has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
A California judge also fined businessman Walter Liew, 56,
more than $28m (£16m) for the crime.
Liew and scientist Robert Maegerle were convicted in March
of stealing US firm DuPont’s secret method of making product whitener titanium
dioxide.
The men then sold the trade secrets to China’s Pangang
Group.
“There are many things I would have liked to have done
differently,” Liew told the court on Thursday. “I regret my actions.”
Judge Jeffrey White said the naturalised citizen had “turned
against his adopted country over greed” in the economic-espionage case.
Liew and his wife, Christina, started USA Performance
Technology Inc in the 1990s and hired a team of ex-DuPont employees to steal
DuPont’s titanium dioxide trade secrets.
Liew and Maegerle then sold DuPont’s secret recipe to
Pangang Group for more than $20m (£12m).
Two other scientists were also linked with the case – one
committed suicide, the other admitted conspiracy to commit economic espionage.
Prosecutors also charged Pangang Group, but were stymied
after a US judge ruled that prosecutors’ attempts to notify Pangang of the
charges were legally insufficient.
USA Performance Inc was also fined nearly $19m in addition
to the $28m Liew was ordered to pay DuPont.
But on Thursday Judge White expressed doubt Liew would ever
pay back much of the debt against him.
“We’ll never get it… It has been spirited out of the
country,” he said, noting US authorities had traced much of the money received
by Liew to several Singapore and Chinese companies controlled by his in-laws.
CNN.
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