Bail Hearing Set for Former Hydro-Québec Employee Charged With Sending Trade Secrets to China

Bail Hearing Set for Former Hydro-Québec Employee Charged With Sending Trade Secrets to China
A Hydro-Quebec logo is seen on the company’s head office building in Montreal on Feb. 26, 2015. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)
Andrew Chen
11/18/2022
Updated:
11/18/2022
0:00

A Quebec court will decide later this month whether to grant bail to a former Hydro-Québec employee who is charged with allegedly sending trade secrets to China.

Yuesheng Wang, 35, appeared via videoconference at the court in Longueuil, Quebec, on Nov. 18, after he was arrested and charged with four espionage-related offences, including obtaining trade secrets, fraud for obtaining trade secrets, breach of trust by public officer, and unauthorized use of computer, according to a release issued by police on Nov. 14.
The resident of Candiac, Quebec, is the first person in Canada to be charged with economic espionage under the Security of Information Act, a RCMP spokesperson told The Epoch Times on Nov. 15, when Wang first appeared in court.

He will return to court in person for his bail hearing scheduled for Nov. 23 and Nov. 24.

Federal prosecutor Marc Cigana had opposed granting bail in Wang’s case, saying he is a flight risk.

“It’s our opinion that, after studying all the circumstances and the evidence, that Mr. Wang is a flight risk; in other words, it’s a first ground objection for bail that he will not come back to court and face the proceedings,” Cigana told reporters after the court hearing on Nov. 15.

RCMP allege that Wang conducted research for Chinese research centres and a Chinese university and that he published scientific articles and filed patents with them rather than with Hydro-Québec. Police also allege he used information without his employer’s consent, harming the utility company’s intellectual property.

RCMP says its national security enforcement team launched an investigation this August after receiving a complaint from Hydro-Québec’s corporate security branch. Wang is alleged to have conducted the crimes between Jan. 1, 2018, and Aug. 22, 2022.

Wang, who has limited knowledge of English and does not speak French, sought to have his bail hearing held immediately on Nov. 15, but was advised by his lawyer to delay. The court said a translator for French-Chinese is required for the next hearing, as at least one witness speaks French only.

Wang had worked as a researcher at the Quebec government-owned hydro utility since October 2016, according to his profile on ResearchGate. Before that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arkansas and a visiting researcher at Queen Mary University of London. He studied at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing between 2010 and 2016.

Wang has been detained at the RCMP’s headquarters in Montreal since his arrest.

Tanya Du and Ke Yi in Montreal and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.