AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
LOS ANGELES: US prosecutors said Monday they plan to seek harsher charges against an engineer and two kin accused of plotting to steal sensitive US Navy warship technology and trying to smuggle it to China.
The plans to beef up charges against Chinese-born engineer Chi Mak, 65, his wife, Rebecca Chiu Lai-wah, 62; and Mak's brother, former television director Mak Tai-wing, 56, came at a pre-trial hearing in Los Angeles.
Assistant US Attorney Greg Staples confirmed to US District Judge Cormac Carney that prosecutors intend to upgrade the charges from the current counts of acting as agents for the Beijing government without being registered to do so, a much lesser charge than espionage.
“That's correct,” Staples replied when Carney asked if the US government intended to seek a new indictment containing “more serious charges” against the trio.
Asked when the new charges could be added, Staples responded: “We're talking a matter of weeks.”
The three suspects were arrested in October after Mak Tai-Wing was arrested at Los Angeles airport as he and his wife boarded a flight to Hong Kong with an encrypted computer disc in their baggage, prosecutors allege.
The disc contained highly-sensitive data allegedly taken by Chi Mak from a computer belonging to his employer, Power Paragon, a US military contractor developing secret stealth technology for US warships.
But prosecutors said they are still poring through 40,000 pages of documents seized in searches that only came to light shortly before an indictment was handed down against the trio in November.
Defence lawyers claimed that the government misrepresented the documents that were recovered from the suspects in a bid to portray them as members of a sophisticated espionage ring.
They stressed that the documents found in the suitcase dealt with power technology and not weaponry or nuclear advances.
According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit, Mak Chi, transferred Power Paragon data on a sensitive US government project to his home, where his wife helped him copy it onto CDs.
He then gave the CDs to his brother Mak Tai-wing, who encrypted the information and made arrangements to take it with him to China, prosecutors allege.
The arrests came after the FBI put the two couples under wiretapping and other surveillance for about two weeks during which they were allegedly heard using what appeared to be code words to refer to the technology during calls to China.
Prosecutor Staples declined to elaborate on potential new charges against the three when quizzed by reporters outside the courtroom.
John Earley, who represents Tai Mak, told reporters, “I'm never surprised by anything.”
If convicted on the current charges, the defendants could face prison terms of up to 10 years plus fines.
The trial for the trio had been scheduled to begin on May 16, but Carney set a new trial date of November 7.
The case is the latest in a string of prosecutions in the United States involving arms trade with China.
