Taiwanese investigators have put OnePlus CEO Pete Lau on the wanted list, suspecting the company of operating on the island without permission and illegally hiring Taiwanese specialists for research and development.
Taiwanese investigators have put OnePlus CEO Pete Lau on the wanted list, suspecting the company of operating on the island without permission and illegally hiring Taiwanese specialists for research and development.
According to Engadget, Taiwanese authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Lau and charged two Taiwanese citizens who worked with him. The investigation alleges that Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus may have recruited more than 70 engineers from Taiwan, bypassing local regulatory requirements.
Prosecutors in Shilin District believe that OnePlus may have been able to disguise its presence through overseas «cover.» This includes setting up a company in Hong Kong under a different name and launching a unit in Taiwan in 2015 without government approval. It was this office that, according to investigators, worked on OnePlus products and performed research and development tasks.
The suspicions are linked to the Cross-Strait Act, a law that regulates Taiwan’s interactions with mainland China. One of the rules requires Chinese companies to obtain permission from Taiwanese authorities before hiring workers on the island. In the OnePlus case, officials believe that these procedures were circumvented, so it is not just about recruitment, but also about the fact of operating without formal approval.
For Taiwan, the issue of «poaching» engineers is of particular importance, as the island is a key center of high technology. Therefore, the authorities regularly check whether foreign, particularly Chinese, companies are creating hidden development teams through foreign jurisdictions.
Earlier, dev.ua wrote about how US President Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The White House believes that he was «politically persecuted» by the previous administration.
