(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 trade 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, “a resident of the People’s Republic of China with Canadian and German citizenship, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transmit trade secrets of the leading electric vehicle company in the United States,” the federal prosecutor for the eastern New York state jurisdiction said in a statement.
By pleading guilty, Mr. Pflugbeil avoids a criminal trial, but faces up to ten years in prison.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 9 in federal court in Central Islip, near New York.
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.
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 that was “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.
