STX Executives Arrested for Stealing Data from Doosan

The High Tech Crime Unit of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office arrested the head of industrial plant department at STX Heavy Industries yesterday. Gu (61) and the chief of the development department, Kim (54), were charged with violating the law on industrial espionage.

Gu and Kim, who had worked for Doosan heavy industries, the world’s No.1 supplier of desalination facilities, for over 20 years, took hundreds of core technical data from Doosan Heavy Industrial by using USB memory devices when they quit the company in June and July this year, respectively, and transferred to STX Heavy Industries.

The prosecutors also found that even after he quit, a USB file was delivered containing 262 trade secrets, such as documents concerning large-scale bid tenders, to Kim through Doosan employees.

Utilizing the core technology and trade secrets stolen by Gu and Kim, SXT won bids for four overseas projects, including a two-trillion-won desalination project in Saudi Arabia.

The prosecution confirmed that the bid documents used by STX to win the projects contained company logos of Doosan and the same clerical errors in the Doosan documents.

Investigators are expanding their probe into whether four other STX employees who transferred from Doosan conspired with Gu and Kim.

A source from the prosecutors’ office said, “This incident is about STX Heavy Industries, which was created just two months ago, and its entry into the desalination facilities market. It tried to reap unjust benefits by employing stolen data worth 20 years of effort from its rival company Doosan.”

Regarding this allegation, STX Group said, “When we received an order for a power plant, it should be completely redesigned according to its environment; thus, we cannot work with former data in this field. The documents possessed by the former Doosan employees cannot be regarded as trade secrets. The data in question was expired and has little economic value because it is easy to get access to it.”

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