Federal prosecutors are recommending dropping charges against a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who was accused last year of hiding work he did for the Chinese government while also collecting U.S. dollars for his nanotechnology research, a person familiar with the decision said Friday.
. Those investigations are part of the China Initiative, a Justice Department effort launched during the Trump administration to crack down on Chinese economic espionage and trade secret theft. Critics of the efforts have called on the Justice Department to end its pursuit of Chinese academics.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model an At the time of his January 2021 arrest, prosecutors accused Chen of entering into undisclosed contracts while working for MIT and holding appointments with Chinese entities, including acting as an "overseas expert" for the Chinese government at the request of the People’s Republic of China Consulate Office in New York.
Prosecutors alleged that Chen failed to disclose his connections to China, as is required on federal grant applications. Defense lawyers have maintained that he is innocent of the charges and that there were no significant omissions on the applications.Prosecutors in Boston have moved to drop the case after new information came to light, including an interview with a high-level Department of Energy official, according to the person familiar with the case.