Ex-Monsanto Employee Pleads Guilty to Corporate Spying

A former Monsanto employee pleaded guilty to espionage charges Thursday for stealing trade secrets from the U.S. agriculture behemoth for the benefit of China, prosecutors said.

Xiang Haitao, 44, a Chinese national who resided in Chesterfield, Mo., worked as an imaging scientist for Monsanto and its subsidiary The Climate Corporation from 2008, and was arrested a day after leaving his company in June of 2017 while awaiting to board a flight to China in possession of a one-way ticket and electronic devices...

The Justice Department has said that Xiang had applied for and was ultimately recruited into a Chinese government program that seeks to enlist Chinese academics and scientists working abroad to illegally transfer technology and intellectual property to Beijing. more