Canadian pleads guilty to stealing trade secrets from DuPont spinoff
A Canadian citizen has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to steal trade secrets from The Chemours Company, the world’s largest producer of sodium cyanide (a chemical used to mine precious metals).
Between 2011 and June 2016, defendant Jerry Jindong Xu was employed in Chemours’ Ontario, Canada office, where he marketed sodium cyanide-based products developed in the US to the Canadian mining market.
According to the US Department of Justice, which made the announcement yesterday, June 12, Xu previously worked for seven years in China for DuPont.
Chemical company Chemours was formed in July 2015 after DuPont separated its performance chemicals business. Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, Chemours performs the research and development for sodium cyanide products.
Xu admitted that during his final year of employment with Chemours, he “systematically acquired—through surreptitious action, false statements to colleagues, and sometimes through his legitimate employment duties—dozens of confidential files, many of which included trade secret information about Chemours’ sodium cyanide business”.
During this time, Xu also secretly established a company called Xtrachemical. The company’s purpose was to solicit Chinese-based investors to build a sodium cyanide plant in Canada, in direct competition with Chemours.
Xu pleaded guilty before District Judge Leonard Stark at the US District Court for the District of Delaware. He is currently being detained until sentencing.
The maximum punishment for conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets is ten years’ imprisonment and up to three years of supervised release.
US attorney David Weiss said: “The theft of these trade secrets so that investors from other countries, like China, can gain an unfair advantage is unacceptable. We will use every tool at our disposal to identify and prosecute those responsible for these crimes.”
Chemours had $6.2 billion in revenues in 2017.
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