Ex-Harvard professor Charles Lieber gets house arrest over China ties

Former Harvard professor Charles Lieber has been sentenced to six months of house arrest on Wednesday, according to US media.

He was found guilty in 2021 of making false statements to authorities, filing false tax returns and failing to report a Chinese bank account.

Critics say a US campaign to counter economic espionage from China hurts the academic community.

Lieber's lawyers asked he be spared prison time because he has cancer.

US District Judge Rya Zobel in Boston also sentenced him two years of supervised release and to one day in prison, which he has already served following his arrest.

He must also pay a $50,000 (£40,100) fine, Bloomberg and Semafor reported.

His lawyers said he was remorseful and had been punished enough because, they claimed, "his reputation has been ruined".

Prosecutors recommended three months in prison, a year of probation and a $150,000 fine along with a $33,600 restitution to the Internal Revenue Service - which Lieber has already paid.

Lieber was previously the head of Harvard's department of chemistry and chemical biology.

When he joined China's Wuhan University of Technology as a scientist in 2011 he was given a monthly salary of $50,000, in addition to living expenses of up to $158,000.

Prosecutors said some of this money was paid to him in $100 bills in brown paper packaging.

To protect his career, prosecutors in Boston said the professor knowingly hid his involvement in China's "thousand talents plan", which aims to attract foreign research specialists.

Filings said he was also given more than $1.5m to establish a research lab at the university and was expected to work for the university, applying for patents and publishing articles in its name.

Though his involvement is not a crime, prosecutors said Lieber "purposely and repeatedly" lied to authorities about his affiliation with the university in Wuhan and failed to declare income earned in China.

Lieber had been awarded $15m in grants from the US National Institute of Health and the US Department of Defence, and recipients are supposed to disclose any conflicts of interest, including financial support from foreign governments or organisations.

The programme has been flagged by the US as a security concern in the past.

The case is among those to come from what the US Department of Justice's calls its China Initiative - which began under in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump's administration.

Some have criticised the programme, saying it threatens academic research, disproportionately targets Chinese researchers and undermines US competitiveness in research and technology.