Former PPG Employee Accused Of Trying To Sell Trade Secrets To The Chinese
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The FBI says a former PPG employee tried to sell trade secrets to the Chinese.
Investigators say the employee was apparently resentful he was forced to leave the company three years ago so he tried to sell the secrets behind a special plastic.
He appeared before a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh today.
The FBI says 62-year-old Thomas Rukavina, of Plum, tried to sell trade secrets from PPG worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The secrets concerned plastic windows used on aircraft and high speed trains that PPG had developed.
Officials say Rukavina had been in contact with a company in China that makes glass for cars and other products.
According to the complaint, the Chinese company asked Rukavina if he had signed "any type of confidential agreement or non-competitive agreement with PPG."
Rukavina allegedly responded, "When you join and when you leave PPG, you are forced to sign these documents. [If] you followed these documents as written you could never work again."
Rukavina went on to write that he was "forced out," and that had he not agreed to leave PPG, he would have received only $18,000 in severance pay instead of $100,000.
Rukavina said, "If PPG owns my brain for life then they should pay me $2 million per year to keep it!!"
PPG says it's cooperating with authorities, but won't comment because the investigation is ongoing.
PPG told the FBI the various information Rukavina shared with the Chinese company would be worth "hundreds of millions of dollars... and the plastic window product in question was the industry's first new transparent plastic in more than 50 years."
On his Facebook page, Rukavina says he has 44 U.S. patents. And that he's responsible for "the highest impact plastic ever developed and approved for aircraft transparencies… will stop any handgun round."
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