The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Jan. 3 that a third former scientist at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets to the tune of $1 billion to benefit a pharmaceutical company which was backed by Chinese regime funding.
A former resident of Malvern, Pennsylvania, Lucy Xi, 44, is the fourth person to plead guilty in the scheme that also involves former GSK scientists Tao Li and Yu Xue, Yu’s sister Tian Xue, and Yan Mei, to whom Xi was married.
According to the DOJ, Renopharma was created by Xi and her co-defendants in Nanjing, China, in order to research and develop anti-cancer drugs. Meanwhile, the three were also employed at GSK’s facility in Upper Merion, Pennsylvania, where they developed biopharmaceutical products.
Prosecutors said they stole trade secrets from their employer to benefit Renopharma, using their positions at the company. Renopharma received financial support and subsidies from the Chinese regime.
U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams said in announcing Xi’s guilty plea that these products typically cost in excess of $1 billion to research and developed.
The DOJ stated that in 2015 Xi sent her husband a GSK document containing confidential and trade secret data and information, such as a summary of the company’s research into monoclonal antibodies at that time.
Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-made proteins that imitate the immune system’s ability to fight off infections, such as viruses.
Xi allegedly wrote in the email: “You need to understand it very well. It will help you in your future business [RENOPHARMA].”
“This defendant illegally stole trade secrets to benefit her husband’s company, which was financed by the Chinese government,” Williams said.
“The lifeblood of companies like GSK is its intellectual property, and when that property is stolen and transferred to a foreign country, it threatens thousands of American jobs and jeopardizes the strategic benefits brought about through research and development. Such criminal behavior must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Yu, Tian, and Tao all previously pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme, which came to light after an FBI probe. Yan, who is currently residing in China, is considered a fugitive by the U.S. government.
According to a 2018 DOJ statement, Yu pleaded guilty in federal court in Pennsylvania to charges of conspiring to steal trade secrets from GSK in August 2018. And, in the following month Tao pleaded guilty to similar charges.
The case is similar to the Chinese biological espionage incident at the Canadian lab.
Since the beginning of the declared pandemic GreatGameIndia has also been following a critical thread of investigation into the origin of COVID-19. The key to this entire issue is what happened in Canada’s Winnipeg National Microbiology Laboratory.
The findings of this investigation has been corroborated by none other than the Bioweapons expert Dr. Francis Boyle who drafted the Biological Weapons Convention Act followed by many nations.
The National Microbiology Laboratory scientist who was escorted out of the Canadian lab along with her husband, another biologist, and members of her research team is believed to be a Chinese Bio-Warfare agent Xiangguo Qiu. Qiu was the head of the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies Section in the Special Pathogens Program at Canada’s NML.
The president of the Public Health Agency of Canada has been given until the end of the week to explain why two Canadian govt scientists (Chinese spies) were let go 18 months after being escorted from #Canada’s only Level 4 laboratory.
Read more 👉🏽 https://t.co/CP87kiQxh7 pic.twitter.com/YE1HqU4xPc
— GreatGameIndia (@GreatGameIndia) March 28, 2021
In March last year, GreatGameIndia reported how the Canadian parliament erupted over a heated debate regarding the cover-up of Chinese spies stealing coronavirus from the Winnipeg based BSL-4 lab to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.Â