The U.S. Department of Justice recently reported that a Chinese national formerly residing in Chesterfield, Mo., has entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to commit economic espionage.
According to court documents, Xiang Haitao, 44, conspired to steal a trade secret from Monsanto, an international company based in St. Louis, to benefit a foreign government, namely the People’s Republic of China.
“Despite Xiang’s agreements to protect Monsanto’s intellectual property and repeated training on his obligations to do so, Xiang has now admitted that he stole a trade secret from Monsanto, transferred it to a memory card, and attempted to take it to the People’s Republic of China for the benefit of Chinese government,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said. “With his guilty plea, Xiang is now being held accountable for this unlawful conduct.”
Court documents showed Xiang was employed by Monsanto and its subsidiary, The Climate Corporation, from 2008 to 2017, working as an imaging scientist. Monsanto and The Climate Corporation developed a digital, online farming software platform used by farmers to collect, store and visualize agricultural field data.
“Mr. Xiang used his insider status at a major international company to steal valuable trade secrets for use in his native China,” U.S. Attorney Sayler Fleming for the Eastern District of Missouri said. “We cannot allow U.S. citizens or foreign nationals to hand sensitive business information over to competitors in other countries, and we will continue our vigorous criminal enforcement of economic espionage and trade secret laws.”
Xiang is slated to be sentenced on April 7, facing a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, a potential fine of $5 million, and a term of supervised release of not more than three years.