Man faces 45 years jail for passing US secrets to China
A CHINESE-born engineer has been found guilty of conspiring to export American defence technology to China, including data on a system that could make submarines virtually undetectable.
Chi Mak also was found guilty in California of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, attempting to violate export control laws and making false statements to the FBI.
Mak faces up to 45 years in prison when he is sentenced on 10 September .
The government accused Mak, a naturalised United States citizen, of taking thousands of pages of documents from his defence contractor employer, Power Paragon, and giving them to his brother, who passed them along to Chinese authorities over a number of years.
Mak, 66, was arrested in 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong. Investigators said they found three encrypted CDs in their luggage that contained documents on a submarine propulsion system, a solid-state power switch for ships and a presentation on the future of power electronics.
Mak’s wife, brother and other relatives also have been indicted and are to go on trial together on 5 June.
Mak acknowledged during the trial that he copied classified documents from his employer and kept copies in his office. He said he did not realise that making the copies was illegal. The trial featured testimony from a parade of FBI agents, US navy officials and encryption and espionage experts.
