France charges four people for handing China and Russia secret tech

France has charged four people with selling high-tech industrial secrets to China and Russia, a judiciary source said on Thursday.

Published: 27 July 2023 13:19 CEST

France charges four people for handing China and Russia secret tech

A statue of the goddess of Justice balancing the scales. (Photo by LOIC VENANCE / AFP)

The four, two French and two Chinese nationals who were charged on March 24th, include two top managers at high-tech firm Ommic, the source said.

Ommic is a semi-conductor company based near Paris, employing just over 100 people.

US chip maker Macom Technology agreed earlier this year to acquire Ommic, and said it would make the French site its European semi-conductor centre.

The Le Parisien newspaper said that Ommic had progressively come under the control of Ruoadan Z., a 63-year-old Chinese national, who became the company’s president in 2018 after buying 94 percent of its capital via an investment fund created in France.

Its managing director, Marc R., and a Chinese manager at the company are suspected of delivering to a foreign power information on systems, documents or files contrary to France’s national interest, the source said.

If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail.

Le Parisien said that Marc R. is accused of knowingly circumventing rules to deliver powerful chips and information on sensitive technology to China and Russia.

This included Gallium Nitride know-how used to boost semi-conductor capabilities.

In a complex dispatch system, the sensitive technology was also delivered via China to Russia, despite a western embargo in place since its invasion of the Crimea, the paper said.

Marc R. was arrested but then released and placed under judicial supervision, it said, as were the three others.

The group first came under suspicion during a border police check in early 2021 which sparked a preliminary probe.

Investigators seized a number of incriminating assets, the judicial source said.

The four charged are also suspected of organised smuggling, fraud and abuse of company assets, the source said.

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The report – released on the eve of the World Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia – documents a 13 percent jump in anti-LGBTQ offences from 2022.

More serious crimes including assaults, threats, and harassment saw a 19 percent increase, with 2,870 instances recorded by French authorities.

“It feels like the embers of LGBTI-phobia have been lit, and now the fire is ready to take hold,” said president of French activist group SOS Homophobie Julia Torlet.

“What worries us most are the emerging trends…we are extremely concerned,” Torlet added, saying “if the government doesn’t act” France risks backsliding into the violence seen in 2013 over the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

The number of anti-LGBTQ incidents has risen sharply – about 17 percent on average each year for crimes and misdemeanours – since 2016, according to the interior ministry.

But these figures only paint part of the picture.

Men account for the majority of both victims and perpetrators in anti-LGBTQ incidents, accounting for 70 and 82 percent, respectively.

Moreover, the perpetrators are predominately young, with nearly half of all accused under 30 and more than a third under 19, says the report.

While the report says victims are now “better received” by authorities, only 20 percent of those subjected to threats or violence and five percent of victims of verbal abuse file a complaint.

“We’re past the worry stage,” spokesman for Stop Homophobie Maxime Haes told AFP.

Anti-LGBTQ acts are linked to the “drastic increase in LGBT-phobic discourse,” said Haes, which he says are fuelled by “the rise of the far right and religious extremism”.

The owner of a bar in Nantes, a city in western France, told regional newspaper Ouest-France it cancelled an LGBTQ-friendly event in early May over safety concerns after a poster featuring individuals in religious habits sparked an “outpouring of hate” online.

And in France, 60 percent of people avoid holding hands with same-sex partners for fear of being assaulted, according to a 2024 report from the European Agency for Fundamental Rights.

The country has also seen a spike in transphobic discourse, Haes said.

SOS Homophobie has denounced what it calls “abysmal government silence” and criticised the lack of “ambitious policy” on LGBTQ issues even after the appointment of out gay Prime Minister Gabriel Attal earlier this year.

“Hate speech is not being combatted at all by politicians,” Haes of Stop Homophobie added.