The former chairperson of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University has been charged with tax offenses for failing to disclose revenue he obtained from the Wuhan University of Technology in Wuhan, China, in a superseding indictment.
The university reportedly paid Dr. Charles Lieber a salary of up to $50,000 a month under a three-year contract, a living allowance of up to $150,000, and granted him over $1.5 million to build a research laboratory at WUT. In exchange, Lieber agreed to conduct international conferences, publish articles and apply for patents on behalf of the university, prosecutors stated.
The four tax-related counts are on top of two other counts of making misleading statements to federal authorities that Lieber pleaded not guilty to last month.
His legal counsel Marc Mukasey disclosed in a statement that his 61-year old client was innocent. "He did not hide anything, and he did not get paid as the government alleges," Nate Raymond quoted Mukasey as saying in his Reuters report.
The latest development in Lieber's criminal case comes as the U.S. Department of Justice has proceeded to prosecute several researchers in the past few weeks for allegedly concealing their links to the Chinese government and its military.
Lieber's case is among the highest-profile ones to surface from a U.S. justice department clampdown on alleged Chinese influence within universities in the wake of worries about espionage, hacking and intellectual property theft.
Last week, the department announced charges against four Chinese scientists who had been operating in the U.S. without disclosing that they were members of China's People's Liberation Army. All four were charged with visa fraud.
Officials allege that Lieber received over $15 million in government research funding over the last 10 years and also became a top scientist at WUT and contractor with China's Thousand Talents Plan for technology recruitment without the knowledge of Harvard faculty.
The indictment has also alleged that Lieber, together with WUT officials, opened a Chinese bank account during a trip to Wuhan in 2012. American taxpayers are mandated to report the existence of any foreign bank account that holds over $10,000 at any given time.
Issuing false statements carries a sentence of up to five years in jail, three years of supervised release, and $250,000 in fines. According to officials, Lieber did not pay taxes on money he earned working for programs and did not file reports making transparent his accounts under a Chinese bank.
