(New York) A German-Canadian businessman, living in China and arrested in the United States, faces ten years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing industrial secrets from one of the main American manufacturers of electric cars, a American justice announced Thursday, without identifying this group.
According to the Canadian and American press, it is Tesla, led by billionaire Elon Musk.
Klaus Pflugbeil, 58, “resident of the People’s Republic of China, Canadian and German nationals, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transmit manufacturing secrets of the United States’ leading electric vehicle company,” the company said in a statement. federal prosecutor for the Eastern New York jurisdiction.
By pleading guilty, Mr. Pflugbeil avoids a criminal trial, but faces up to ten years in prison.
His sentence is scheduled to be pronounced on October 9 in federal court in Central Islip, near New York.
Klaus Pflugbeil and Yilong Shao, an alleged accomplice on the run, were confused at the end of 2023 by agents of the American federal police (the FBI) who had posed as Long Island industrialists interested in purchasing their products.
The prosecution traced the thread of their actions back to 2019. They then worked for a “Canadian manufacturer” of pumps for electric vehicle battery assembly lines. According to the Canadian press, this is the Ontario company Hibar Systems, bought in 2019 by Tesla.
The two men are accused of stealing industrial and commercial secrets from Hibar Systems, including “original documents and drawings” on the technology of these pumps.
According to the court, Klaus Pflugbeil left the “Canadian manufacturer” in 2020 to join a company founded in China by Mr. Shao.
This company manufactures and markets the same pump technology as that “stolen from Mr. Pflugbeil’s former employer”.
His guilty plea “demonstrates that this prosecution quickly brings to justice those who misappropriate the intellectual property of American companies and that it protects our economy and our national security,” said federal prosecutor Breon Peace.