Four charged over selling Waterloo company's satellite imaging secrets to China

Officers with the Kitchener department of the RCMP Serious and Organized Crime Unit have arrested two people on Canadian soil, charged with the illegal export of “controlled goods and technologies” to China in the form of microelectronic sensors made by Waterloo, Ontario digital imaging and semiconductor company Teledyne DALSA Inc.
Arthur Xin Pang, of Pierrefonds, Quebec, and Binqiao Li, of Waterloo, are in police custody, while arrest warrants have been issued for British citizen Nick Tasker and California resident Hugh Ciao, who is currently in China.
The four men allegedly wrote up contracts between a Chinese-based company co-founded  by two of the men and another state-owned corporation, in violation of the Canadian Controlled Goods Program and related Export Laws.
Two of the accused worked for Teledyne DALSA and allegedly stole company secrets with the help of a former employee, for which they have been charged by the RCMP with the illegal export of controlled goods and technologies to China.
“Canada has an international responsibility to safeguard its exports which potentially may be used against Canadians and their allies,” said Superintendent Jamie JAGOE, Southwest District Commander for the RCMP in Ontario. “This investigation is an example of foreign governments having an interest in Canadian based controlled technology and it highlights the RCMP’s commitment to keeping Canadians safe from the potential misuse of that technology.”
Arthur Xin Pang and his company Global Precision Inc., along with United Kingdom citizen Nick Tasker and his Montreal-based company, 3D Microelectronics Inc., have been charged.
In early 2014, the RCMP received a written complaint from Teledyne DALSA, asserting that stolen microelectronics made by the company were being illegally shipped to China for the design and development of technology relating to satellite imaging.
All four men are charged with a long list of crimes, including theft, fraud and possession, and transfer of controlled goods contrary to the Defense Production Act.
The RCMP thanked the Canadian Space Agency, Canada Border Service Agency, Department of National Defense, Public Services and Procurement Canada, Global Affairs Canada, and US Agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, and FBI for assistance with the investigation.
Just today, Teledyne DALSA’s multispectral imaging system on board the English imaging satellite DCM3 began returning images from orbit, providing high speed downlink and high resolution imagery of various sites on the Earth’s surface.
“We lose between $50-billion and $100-billion in Canada every year to economic espionage,” security consultant and former CSIS Asia-Pacific bureau chief Michel Juneau-Katsuya told the Financial Post in 2012. “They are stealing economic information from Canada in particular because Canada is a knowledge-based economy and intellectual property is the item of choice.”