VERITAS

Top Harvard Prof Convicted of Lying About China Ties

Charles Lieber was charged last year with giving false statements about his participation in a Chinese program that U.S. officials say is a conduit for economic espionage.

A Harvard University nanotechnology professor has been convicted of lying to U.S. authorities about his ties to a Chinese university and a recruitment program run by the Chinese government. Charles Lieber, 62, was found guilty by a federal jury on Tuesday after prosecutors said he’d given false statements about his participation as a “strategic scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology, and in the Thousand Talents Program, a recruitment drive that U.S. authorities believe may be a conduit for economic espionage. He lied about his involvement to the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, which had given him $15 million in research grants. He was driven, prosecutors said, by a quest for a Nobel Prize. Lieber, who told FBI agents he’d been “younger and stupid” in collaborating with the Chinese university, was paid up to $50,000 a month plus more than $150,000 in annual living expenses. Prosecutors said Lieber failed to report his salary fully on his 2013 and 2014 income tax returns.