A Virginia physicist who pleaded guilty to selling technical information to China’s space program was following accepted business practices when he attempted to bribe Chinese officials, the attorney for Shu Quan-Sheng said in court documents.
Shu’s attorney, James Broccoletti, was arguing for a lower prison sentence than the more than seven years prosecutors want U.S. District Judge Henry Morgan to give Shu during the expected sentencing hearing on Tuesday.
Shu, 68, is a leading expert in hydrogen technology. He was born in Shanghai, educated in China and came to the United States in the early 1980s to conduct research at the University of Washington in Seattle.
He became a U.S. citizen in 1998, the same year he started his Newport News-based trading group AMAC International Inc. marketing hydrogen technologies to China. In 2003, Shu brokered a contract with an unnamed French company to help the French company acquire contracts for hydrogen technology with the Chinese government, Shu admitted in court documents filed in Norfolk’s federal court.
The technology would be used by the Chinese to develop hydrogen-propelled rockets so they could “send space stations and satellites into orbit,” Shu said. However, the U.S. State Department considers that technology to be an armament, and U.S. companies are banned from selling weapons to China, which Shu admitted to knowing.
Between 2003 and 2007, AMAC worked on a deal with China on the French company’s behalf. By 2005, it became clear to Shu that German and Russian companies were also competing for the Chinese contract and were not only offering a lower price, but also substantial kickbacks, he admitted. So, he began offering three Chinese officials a percentage of the commission AMAC would earn if the officials granted the French company the contract.
Shu “admits the offers were made, admits they were to foreign officials, and admits that it was for the purpose of receiving the contract,” Broccoletti wrote. “However, he asks the Court to consider that AMAC’s competitors have offered (percentage) points to meet the customer’s demand. In the end nothing was paid by AMAC.”
Despite Shu giving nothing to the officials, the French company won the contract.
“The final irony of the sale,” Broccoletti wrote, “is that [the technology the French company sold the Chinese] did not work.”
