Mo Yun, a Chinese woman accused of conspiring to steal
genetic material from Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred and LG Seeds, has failed in her
bid to have the charges dismissed.
She told a federal judge she wasn’t working for the
company when the alleged thefts occurred.
But the judge decided that the charges against her and her
brother and five others will go to trial.
Prosecutors say more than $500 million worth of
intellectual property was stolen from Pioneer Hi-Bred, Monsanto, and LG Seeds.
Mo Yun’s husband is chief executive officer of a
biotechnology company in China.
Mo and her brother were arrested this year in the U.S and
are scheduled to be tried together in Iowa.
The other five suspects are believed to be in China, which
has no extradition agreements with the U.S.
Her attorneys recently argued that most of the evidence
alleges crimes committed after she left the company in 2008, including
allegations of digging in cornfields to find seeds and shipping them out of the
country in 2011 and 2012.
