Two Chinese citizens were charged Wednesday in the United States with plotting to steal and then attempting to resell technology of Canadian origin used in the mass production of batteries now owned by the Tesla company.
Klaus Pflugbeil, 58, identified in court documents as living in Ningbo, China, was arrested Tuesday on Long Island, New York.
He thought he was going there to meet a businessman ready to negotiate the purchase of industrial secrets, but who was in fact a double agent working for the country’s federal authorities. A second Chinese citizen, Yilong Shao, 47, was also charged, although authorities could not trace him at this time.
“The defendants established a company in China, blatantly stole important trade secrets for manufacturing electric vehicles from a U.S. company, which cost several million dollars in research and development, and sold products based on the secrets. stolen business,” said Eastern District of New York Attorney Breon Peace in a statement.
Although it is not identified in court documents, several American media reported that the company victim of the theft was the automobile manufacturer Tesla.
A company “renowned in the industry”
The stolen technology, a continuous motion battery assembly system, would have been developed by a Canadian manufacturer bought by Tesla in 2019. It provided the company, owned by multi-billionaire Elon Musk, “a substantial competitive advantage” in the process of manufacturing batteries, including those intended for electric cars, explain the American authorities.
The Canadian manufacturer in question is also not identified in the indictment. But, in 2019, Tesla purchased Hibar Systems, a battery manufacturing company based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, a transaction reported at the time by the media outlet Electric Autonomy Canada.
Although renowned in the industry, Hibar is far from being a household name in Canada, the article then detailed, specifying that it had been among a group of three companies in the Greater Toronto area to receive a grant in the under the Industrial Research Assistance Program of the National Research Council of Canada, in April 2019.
Hibar then declared that he had used the 2 million received to develop a system for manufacturing high-efficiency lithium-ion batteries.