http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/us-prosecutor-leading-china-probe-explains-effort-led-charges-against-harvard-chemist

The U.S. government isn’t prosecuting Charles Lieber because he’s a world-renowned inorganic chemist at Harvard University, says the U.S. attorney who last week drew headlines by charging Lieber with making false statements about his ties to Chinese research institutions. Nor does the Department of Justice (DOJ) think for a minute that Lieber is a spy.

What worries Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for the Massachusetts district, is that Lieber was allegedly paid to carry out research in China, which, combined with his failure to disclose those relationships, makes him potentially vulnerable to pressure from the Chinese government to do its bidding at some future point. “It was the amount of money involved that drew our attention,” says Lelling, referring to a 2012 contract included in court documents that indicates Lieber received $50,000 a month in salary and millions of dollars in research support. “That is a corrupting level of money.”