Yi-Ch Shi (Yi-Chi Shih)

Yi-Ch Shi (Yi-Chi Shih)

Biography

On June 26, 2019 the court found guilty the engineer who reported the semiconductor chips of a military class used by the Pentagon to China. It will go to prison, the imprisonment term will be approved later. The defendant is threatened by 219 years of imprisonment.

Prosecutors claimed that 64-year-old Yi-Chi Shih from Los Angeles agreed to the accomplice to get access to unnamed American firm which made chips and monolithic integrated circuits of a very high frequency range (MMIC). Having issued itself for the potential client, Shih received required chips. It was meant that chips will be used only in the USA, however Shih transferred them to the Chinese firm Chengdu GaStone Technology Company (CGTC) which builds the plant on production of MMIC.

The American prosecutor's office claims that chips of the company were used both in commercial, and in the military purposes, and the U.S. Air Force, Navy and the Agency of perspective researches in the field of defense (DARPA) were clients. Semiconductor solutions were used in rockets, the systems of targeting of rockets, fighters, a radar-location and "radio-electronic fight".

Shi did not request the export license as he understood that such request will be denied. When the fraudulent scheme was opened, investigators understood that Shi was the president of CGTC. Before his company was included in the watch list of Ministry of Commerce for "participation in the actions contradicting the interests of national security and foreign policy of the USA, in particular [...] because of illegal purchases of goods for unauthorized use in the military purposes".

On June 26 Shi was found guilty under 18 articles, including of a plot for the purpose of violation of the International law on emergency economic powers (IEEPA) and a plot for the purpose of receiving unauthorized access to the protected computer for obtaining information.^[1]

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