Ex-Harvard professor sentenced to 6 months' house arrest for lying about China ties

A former Harvard University professor was sentenced on Wednesday to six months' house arrest for lying about his ties to a China-run recruitment programme, prosecutors said, in one of the highest-profile cases resulting from a crackdown on Chinese influence on US research.

Charles Lieber, a renowned nanoscientist and the former chairman of Harvard's chemistry department, was spared additional prison time in the sentence announced by US district judge Rya Zobel in Boston following his conviction in December 2021.

Lieber was sentenced to two days in prison - time that he had already served following his arrest - and half a year of house arrest with a fine of US$50,000 (about RM220,000), prosecutors said.

He was also sentenced to two years of supervised release and a restitution to the Internal Revenue Service of US$33,600, according to prosecutors.

Lieber, who has been battling cancer, denies wrongdoing.

A federal jury had found him guilty of making false statements to authorities, filing false tax returns and failing to report a Chinese bank account in a case spilling out of the US Department of Justice's "China Initiative."

The conviction had marked a key victory for prosecutors pursuing cases arising from the troubled initiative, which was launched in 2018 during Republican then-president Donald Trump's administration to counter suspected Chinese economic espionage and research theft.

The Justice Department under President Joe Biden in February 2022 ended the China initiative following several failed prosecutions and criticism that it chilled research and fuelled bias against Asians, though it said it would continue pursuing cases over national security threats posed by China.

The failed cases included another one in Boston in which prosecutors in January 2022 dropped charges against Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Gang Chen for concealing his ties to China when seeking grant money.

Prosecutors alleged that Lieber, in his quest for a Nobel Prize, agreed in 2011 to become a "strategic scientist" at Wuhan University of Technology in China and through it participated in a Chinese recruitment drive called the Thousand Talents Program.

China used that programme to recruit foreign researchers to share their knowledge with the country. Participation is not a crime, but prosecutors contended Lieber lied about his role in the program in response to inquiries from the US Defense Department and the US National Institutes of Health, which had awarded him US$15 million in research grants.

The Wuhan university agreed to pay him up to US$50,000 per month plus US$158,000 in living expenses, and he was paid in cash and deposits to a Chinese bank account, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Lieber failed to report his salary on his 2013 and 2014 income tax returns and for two years failed to report the bank account.