How To Sign Maine Banking Form

How to industry sign banking maine form now

good evening and good afternoon everyone um we're really excited to have you all join us today for the webinar on federal grant applications and era of the china initiative how to avoid trouble my name is vivian chung and i'm the program coordinator for the anti-racial profiling project at asian americans advancing justice ajc so our organization just tell you a little bit about ourselves advancing asian americans advancing justice hac is a national 501c3 nonprofit founded in 1991 in washington dc our mission is to advance to civil and human rights for asian americans and to build and promote a fair and equitable society for all we're pleased to host today's webinar which focuses on helping scientists and researchers navigate current guidelines from federal grant making agencies we're glad to have two distinguished attorneys joining us today as speakers and mayor peter zeidenberg partner at art fox as well as catherine pandrodano who is a partner at dorsey and whitney during the webinar today they will cover topics on the disclosure of foreign activities including conflict of interest as well as current and pending support disclosures and grant applications they will also cover tax informed bank account reporting obligations associated with foreign income received by u.s researchers i want to let you all know that we will have a q a session at the end of the webinar and you can use the q a portal or chat box to ask your questions if you have questions during the presentations please also use the q a portal or chat box to send us your questions and i do want to mention here that for legal and privacy purposes we ask for everyone to please do not discuss your personal situation or provide any facts related to an investigation or pending litigation during this webinar and as you guys can see this webinar will be recorded and um before turning it over to our speakers today i just want to briefly share with you what we are doing here at advancing justice ajc to combat the racial profiling of asian americans and asian immigrants so last year we launched the anti-racial profiling project due to increasing concerns from the asian american community in recent years we have seen a sharp rise in the mass investigations of asian americans and asian immigrants particularly those working in fields of science under programs like the department of justice china initiative the anti-racial proving project offers resources and legal referrals to those impacted by the us government's targeting and profiling of asian american and immigrant scientists researchers and scholars and many of them happen of chinese descent so um as you can see on the slide here the project includes three pillars the first pillar is our legal referral service so at advancing justice ajc we offer a bilingual attorney referral service that connects impacted persons to attorneys who are experienced with this type of cases and this service is free and you can contact us using signal and encrypted messaging app that we use to best protect folks privacy and the number is 202-935-6014 my colleague here will also drop it this information in the chat box for you so you can take a look and take down the number but please note that um at advancing justice ajc we do not provide direct representation or legal advice on individual cases this is strictly a legal referral service line and our second pillar is education so that includes providing bilingual educational materials and trainings such as know your rights fact sheets and webinars like this one um we want to provide this information to our community members because we want to make sure people know their rights when they are approached by law enforcement and please check the chat box again for links to our know your rights fact sheets in both chinese and english and that should be in simplified and traditional chinese the third pillar is advocacy and we engage in policy analysis impact litigation and public education on these and related racial profiling issues for policy makers the media and the general public and i really want to mention that recently we let a sign-on letter to president biden to call for an end to the justice department's china initiative we will drop that letter in the chat box as well if you want to take a look at it i definitely encourage you to do so and just yesterday we launched the petition and letter writing campaign to call for a stop on the federal government's racial profiling of asian american asian immigrant scientists and as well again to put an end to the china initiative we actually worked with directly impacted persons on this who chose to remain anonymous on launching this petition and we encourage everyone to check it out it is honestly a great way to take action in helping to stop the criminalization of asian americans and asian immigrants in this country so um lastly if you have specifically specific policy advocacy requests such as letters uh filing amicus briefs in support of your case please reach out to my colleague gazella kusakawa uh we'll drop her contact information in the chat and if you're interested in learning more about our legal referral service or about our webinars and know your rights trainings please reach out to me and i'll have my colleague drop my email in the chat box as well and we'll also have an contact information slide at the end of the webinar so you can take down this information if you didn't um get a chance to do so so without further ado i want to turn things over to our speakers today um our first speaker is peter zeidenberg who is a partner at the law firm art box as i mentioned earlier peter's practice focuses on defending scientists individuals and companies and white-collar criminal matters involving contracting fraud trade secret theft economic espionage export violations and espionage-related offenses peter represented peter has represented impacted persons including temple university professor doctors lccc who was falsely accused of economic espionage peter the floor is yours thank you um and thanks for everybody for joining this is a topic i know that affects directly a great many uh chinese-american scientists and if you are a chinese-american scientist right now any practicing in the united states um you are understandably nervous um so let me um let me try and join uh share this screen does that work okay so um what i'd like to do is just go in the next um 10 to 15 minutes run through some slides and try and explain um you know from the white collar criminal perspective how you can best stay out of trouble if you are a chinese-american scientist who also gets uh grants from the federal government um as you hmm let me see here we go as you as you've probably seen um the headlines uh i'm just running through um many of these people i i've either represented or they've called me um not all obviously but um this is just the sampling from the last i don't know six months or so um of all the different professors and the headlines um and as you know this is all stemmed from the china initiative which i'm sure most if not all of you have been hearing a great deal about that was announced by attorney general sessions about two years ago supposedly to combat the national security threat posed by china and focusing prosecutorial attention identifying those engaged in trade secret theft hacking and economic espionage as i go through these uh you know one of the themes i want to uh talk about is the fact that the goal of the china initiative um while while unobjectionable i think to most people has been uh it hasn't been followed um because while attorney general sessions was talking about economic espionage and theft of trade secrets um what in reality has happened is they have been going over faulty paperwork um and you know i think we've seen some of the really inflammatory uh statements coming from the justice department from the attorney general from the fbi director talking about uh the threat that china posed and and this was one of the statements that i think is really very consequential and very concerning this is from john demers who's the assistant attorney general for the national security division and uh john basically said that he wants to do he wants every u.s attorney's office in the country and there are 94 of them to be doing one of these cases every year and that's the goal and as you might uh imagine there aren't 94 cases a year to be brought not ones with merit and so as a result of the pressure being uh felt in these u.s attorney's office they're bringing cases that have nothing to do with uh economic espionage or with theft of trade secrets nih has been along with the national security division department of energy the department of defense in particular and the national science foundation have been particularly aggressive nih sent out 18 000 letters to administrators asking them to basically scrutinize any of their scientists that have ties to china and the result of that has been a tremendous number of faculty members research scientists who have ended up being prosecuted and if not prosecuted losing their job and losing their funding so the way these begin is the universities take over these um uh they're tasked basically with doing the investigation and without the knowledge of of you know the scientists the universities access the email accounts of these um professors and they're looking at on the one hand the grant applications to see what was disclosed and then they're going not forms available of interest and then they're looking to see what ties if any uh the scientist has in china um and so what ends up happening um is they're they're looking let me go first what they're not looking for they're if you think you're off the hook because you never transferred anything to china you never disclose anything to anyone sadly you're mistaken you should be off the hook for that but that is really not what these um cases have been about what they're looking at is were you ever a member of a talent program in china were you ever affiliated with the chinese university or research facility did you ever get payments from anyone in china those are things they're looking for and most of the time these things aren't disclosed because frankly the grant application paperwork never explicitly called for these types of disclosures so the biggest the biggest red flag is that a is the thousand talent program it doesn't you know thousand talent program is the most well known but there are many other talent programs in china so they're all viewed with a great deal of suspicion by the department of justice and these granting agencies they view them as sinister and so if you've participated in one or even if you have not participated in one but you discussed joining one you are going to be flagged many many times professors um go through the process the application process for a talent program and they actually are awarded the program and when they get the program they find out oh gosh it requires me to move to china for nine months it was requiring a commitment that i did not anticipate and the professor will say you know i can't do that i i'm not i'm not going to do that and what ends up happening is that the sponsoring agency in china says well don't worry about it we just want to you know do the best you can when you come over here give a lecture and so from that professor's standpoint and mindset he's never you know he's not a member but the university in china will have that professor listed on their website unbeknownst to the professor and that will be discovered by the university or by the government you know in this country and they will find that to be you know as proof that you actually were a talent member so if there's an undisclosed affiliation are some not [Music] off available possible criminal prosecution again these are the risk factors that you should that really put a target on your back uh ethnic chinese you have u.s funded grants typically from nih national science foundation says nsd it should be nsf doe department of defense and nasa um and then affiliations with chinese universities and participation in a talent program [Music] so don't expect unfortunately uh to be treated fairly um not just by the government but by your university um some universities have been terrific you know we know um at mit they're paying the legal fees of the professor there but um and for the most part um that's not well that that's almost unheard of in fact that's the only case i've heard of where they've done that and in many cases they have summarily dismissed tenured professors even without asking them for an explanation just simply based on the emails that they find obviously the consequences from this are are dire on the reputational harm there's a great deal of expense involved defending yourself in these cases um the loss of grant funding it it can be quite devastating as you might imagine so how best to protect yourself the key is transparency and of course transparency is is um it's very easy to say it's harder to do because these forms um that need to be filled out are ambiguous at least um you know that's what the granting agencies have acknowledged at least in various forms that that these um reporting requirements have changed um and their interpretation of them have changed so for a long time a lot of people did not believe or understand that foreign affiliations were called for in these grant applications now they most definitely are so you have to disclose any affiliations you have in china keep all your records make sure you communicate everything with your university with your dean with your provost with your department chair make sure they understand what you're doing in china and when do not participate in any talent program if you're getting federal grants it's just going to be a nightmare for you be sure to disclose everything on your bio sketch on your conflict of interest form with the university and any chinese grants it's a must that they be listed if you have undisclosed affiliations do not just volunteer this information it's i've had clients do this for the best of reasons and it's created enormous headaches for them um i would get counsel from an attorney if you have undisclosed affiliations so they can be understood and they can be handled with the advice of counsel make copies of all your work emails and files and keep a set on a hard drive off site because in the worst case scenario your access to all of these emails can be cut off without any warning and that those emails and those documents are the ones you're going to need to defend yourself so operate under the assumption that everything could be cut off to you and keep hard copies not hard copies be but keep a hard drive with a mirrored copy of everything on your computer back it up all the time and then try and keep a set of that out of your house and somewhere you that will not be taken if there's a search of your home if the university um tells you that they have questions and want to talk to you um find out who's going to be present if they're going to have outside counsel present which they often do then you should have outside counsel present it's only fair and and it's a sign if they have outside counsel present that things have escalated and these are not just routine questions if the fbi or other federal agents approach you and if they do so they'll probably come to your home or your office early in the morning when you're not expecting them they'll be very polite they'll be very well dressed and you're going to feel obligated to speak with them you have no obligation to speak with them you have no obligation to answer any questions my advice would be to politely decline get their cards tell them you'll have counsel contact them you have every right not to speak with them and in most cases that's the best advice they're not your friends if you're arrested or you're charged you have the right to remain silent don't talk wait till you get an attorney um the agents will try and speak with you they will try and speak with your wife or if you have a husband they'll speak with your husband you might want to talk to your wife or your husband in advance and tell them if agents come let' tell them we'll get a lawyer and we'll have our lawyer contact you and that's what i got so good luck everybody and uh we'll have questions at the end yes thank you peter for providing this informative presentation and as um peter just mentioned again for those in the audience who have questions please send them into the q a box or drop it in the chat box and we'll address them in the q a session at the end of the webinar and so our next speaker is catherine pangurdano catherine is a partner at the law firm dorsey and whitney and corporate group head in the firm's new york office she leads the firm's globally recognized u.s china transactional practice and as a prominent chinese-speaking business lawyer in new york catherine together with the government grants lawyers and white-collar criminal defense lawyers at dorsey and whitney china initiative task force they have successfully helped scientists researchers universities and research labs navigate the difficult territory of the doj's china initiative investigations in cases so catherine welcome and the floor is yours thank you vivian i want to thank the organizers first for inviting me and for putting us together to talk about such an important topic joy if you can go to the next slide as you can see my background and experience as a corporate attorney makes me very privileged to have the opportunity of working with a lot of scientists particularly medical device inventors biologists medical professors etc that's why about two and a half years ago after november 2018 when the former general attorney general uh formed the china initiative task force at the department of justice i led the dorsey white collar criminal defense team to form a response to the doj's china initiative which is called dorsey and whitney china initiative task force so because of this task force we've had the opportunity to do what peter does you know we have defended and protected a lot of professors and scientists around the country and we worked with the universities hospitals and research institutions as well because oftentimes the institutions themselves might be under investigation by nih by doj or by any other grant making federal agencies as well um i only have 15 minutes today to go through my presentation i don't want to repeat a lot of the helpful advice that peter has already given you so i'm just going to make three points today um joy if you can go to slide number 10 which is your slide number i think 34 44. yeah your slide number 44 about the three types of cases yeah thank you so there are really three types of cases out there the first type is the rare very few cases where yes the us government caught a few spies from china and then they are the real bad actors but this is a very small number and small percentage of cases the second type of cases are the professor xi xiaoxing type of cases where the defendants were completely wrongfully accused and they were innocent but the vast majority of the cases today are the third type of cases the disclosure cases it's really hard for the government actually to catch a spy um and it's um it's rare that they completely falsely accuse somebody who is completely innocent but the disclosure cases are plenty out there all the arrests that you have noticed recently including professor charles lieber from harvard and professor gaunchen from mit those are the disclosure cases and there those are three types of disclosures back to the same slide joy three types of disclosure cases um violation of the grant and because under the false claims act if you apply for federal grants to fund your scientific research you are subject to the false claims act so if you make a mistake and basically fraudulently disclose or fail to disclose certain information in the federal grant applications the false claims act will apply and then the second type of those uh disclosure cases are the tax cases you know if you have income for from your foreign positions whether it's the thousand talents project or transgender or some sort of secondary positions at a chinese university you might have some foreign incomes from that second position or even just a sponsored trip or a conference where you got paid and these foreign incomes are required to be reported on your u.s tax returns if you are a u.s taxpayer so as you can see from a lot of the recent prosecutions the federal prosecutors are going down very hard on undisclosed foreign incomes and the third type of cases are related to the tax cases foreign bank accounts fbar disclosure cases so basically if you are a u.s person and if you have a foreign bank account you are required to to disclose this foreign bank account if this amounts under the foreign bank accounts in aggregate exceed 10 000 per year and you need to file an f bar report under the thing send requirements now i call them three types of cases but oftentimes one case can cover um three accounts right so for example professor chung's case and also professor lieber's cases those cases all cover multiple accounts both ground frauds and attacks and fbar issues now let's go to the next slide so as you know scientists are required to disclose their ties to chinese institutions when you apply for grants from the nih nsf doe dod etc failure to disclose oftentimes can be an oversight because the forms that you are asked to fill out can be very lengthy and a lot of professors and scientists consider basically um their um positions in a chinese university right change to be an honorary position a celebratory position rather than a real second job and despite of what the contract actually says um the actual obligation can be very different joy if we can go back to slide number six where it says thousand talents contract i'm going to show you um that's 40 on your master slides i'm going to show you what a typical uh you just passed it slide number six next yes thank you so this is a typical thousand talents contract by the way this is already public information um a typical thousand talents contract um there are three types right so the senior thousand talents the junior thousand talents and the entrepreneur thousand talents project the senior one usually lasts for three years and it requires a lot of commitment you know full-time in china and also you may be asking to construct a lab you might be asked to train several phd students at the chinese university in reality your actual commitments and your actual activities in china might be very limited because you are still a full-time professor in the us at your home institution it's virtually impossible for you to actually fulfill a contract like this but this hasn't certainly hasn't stopped the us government from alleging your actual activities and commitment in china are consistent with what this contract says so you have to be very careful because oftentimes if this type of contract is in your university email you should assume that when the university images your computer they should be able to get their hands on this contract and they're going to read it the way that's very broad and they're going to read it literally meaning whatever the contract says even if you actually didn't perform they might consider it to be your actual activities under the contract so you will have to be very very careful when you um disclose this type of contracts so always to have an attorney um and then to be careful of how you interpret this contract and how you explain your actual activities under your contract and back to this like we were at before uh joyce sorry i'm giving you challenges uh that's slide number 11 or number 45 on your deck next one yes so what i want to ask you to do is to very much focus on what's going to come in the next month or two months because it's already march 4th if you are a university professor or researcher you know that the annual certification season is coming up and the annual grant application season is coming up so this year when you fill out whether it's the nih grant application or your university coi form or your oar form the outside activity report form you should keep all these cases in mind and fill out the paperwork in a way that's a hundred percent accurate truthful and up-to-date on the next slide i'm going to show you what this cor form looks like join next so this is a typical cor coi from conflict of interest form i'm using the nyu example here they have already updated their form to particularly cover the thousand talents which i think is helpful because in the past they didn't specify you know a thousand talent participation counts as outside the professional activity but now they particularly add this provision to make it very clear but you have to be careful even if your university hasn't done the job of spelling out what those activities can be you should definitely count your um talents program whether it's changing or tearing or anything else or even if you are not working with a chinese university but you're working with a private company a us company or a chinese company and you're providing them some scientific advice you are on their advisory board and you should disclose it you might think well the income there is very limited or there is no income for my advisory position at this outside company but remember most universities have adopted a zero dollar stress hold these days so whether you have derived income from the outside activity or not it's um it's not for you to judge whether that's relevant or not you just have to disclose it then your university will make a judgment call there on the next slide this is an outside activity uh disclosure form again you can see a typical question there can be do you or an immediate family member of yours receive any income or research support from foreign government or from foreign institutions again you know even if you yourself now you've heard about all these cases you're very careful now but if your mother has a bank account in china and you ask the chinese university to wire money into your mother's bank account um and then you leave a paper trail in your email or wechat right that can be caught as well so most universities would cover your immediate family member next slide so the clr form and the oar forms those are university level forms now let's quickly talk about the federal forms for example in 2020 nih and nsf and other federal ground making agencies have synchronized their disclosure requirements so the sessions that you need to be very very careful of are the biosketch section other support including current and pending support those are usually the sections where you need to disclose your outside position even if you think it's an ordinary position you should disclose it and other support i want to talk a little bit more about other support because this is really important joy if you can go on to the next slide under the old nih and nsf rules other support means other support for your the project that you are seeking money from the federal grant making agency so most scientists understand the word projects to mean for example if you are pi the word project means the project you are working on and that you are seeking federal money from and that is a particular topic that you are going to exercise your scientific investigation in that's a typical definition of a project in the scientific world so in the past nih requires you to disclose other current and pending support for ongoing projects that's why most scientists you know tripped over because they think oh the thousand talents program money i received from china it's not to support the same project that i'm receiving money from the nih it's just for something in general right for my general status as a very renowned scientist and for my very soft commitment to these chinese universities it's not to fund the same project however nih expanded the rule actually last year 2020. joy you can go on to the next slide in 2020 you can see the new disclosure that's the rule that they're going to apply which says all resources made available to you in support of your research efforts so they got rid of the words projects and programs and they use research efforts in general and they specifically says now these support also include in-kind contribution which includes office lab space equipment supplies phd students employees manpower etc so it's really really broad now and you have to really comply with the current rule unfortunately nih also thinks the current rule applies to the past behavior even though their old rules clearly said something different but according to nih and nsf interpretation they think the old rule cover the thousand talents and outside talents programs as well and they refuse to acknowledge the new rules are brand new and an expansion of their old rules they're saying the new rules are clarifications of the old rules so bad news for you if you have old like nih grants from two years ago and the the rules at the time even though it should apply to pending support for your projects and programs in fact nih is still going to interpret it in a way that is consistent with their current disclosure rules i know this is complicated but i think the takeaway point for you is going forward you should be very very broad and also accurate in your nih disclosure um a quick comparison of the new rule and the old rules are on the next slides so basically they expanded beyond the specific project or proposal to cover any research efforts and they also added in-kind contributions so and then i think i want to spend a little bit time to talk about tax and fbar and then give you some practical advice so um basically first um i just mentioned to you that if you have foreign income whether it's from your talents projects or secondary job in the chinese university or your role of you know advisory board at a biotech company all these incomes in china you need to disclose them on your u.s tax returns right and then some of you may ask well there's a treaty between u.s and china can i just basically qualify myself under the treaty no it doesn't work that way basically it's going to be very detailed i won't go into the details but the treaty doesn't work in the way that you can just offset in your mind how the tax credits are applied so you basically have to disclose and report your foreign income on your u.s tax returns and then fbar what is f-bar most people probably have never heard about f-bar before it stands for foreign bank account reporting it basically means a united states person that has a financial interest in or signature authority over foreign financial accounts must file an fbar if the aggregate value of the foreign financial accounts exceeds ten thousand dollars at any time during a calendar year now a u.s person means a u.s citizen or a green card holder a corporation a partnership an llc a trust or a state so it's very broad so if you have a company in china you form the company in china and you are the ceo or if you have signatory power authority over the company's bank account you have to file the fba on behalf of the company and also what is a foreign financial account it includes a bank account it includes a brokerage account it also includes a mutual fund accounts and the ten thousand dollar disclosure threshold i just mentioned that's the aggregate threshold so if you have a savings account and a brokerage account you have to add up the money for any given calendar year and the way to report this is to file the fba report on the things them form 114. um so three takeaway points for you uh let's go to the last slide joy do and don'ts so whether it's the time for you to disclose to university or make your grant application or whether you are questioned by a university integrity office and you're working with your attorney to respond their questions these are my advice regarding what to do and what not to do a lot of them overlap with what peter just told you um i would advise you to really use your calendar if you have a google calendar or outlook calendar go back to your calendar go back to your passport look at your visa stamps and really refresh your memory as to where you were in china or in a different place or what you did during that period of time that's going to make your disclosu e a lot more accurate the second thing i would advise you to do is to check on google and also on baidu to see what the internet is saying about you because even though the chinese government is trying to delete all the people trail and all the internet footprint about those thousand talents or transgender program the reality is when something is on the internet it's really hard to completely remove it so and the us government is doing this fbi is doing this your university is doing this they are hiring people to check both chinese and english websites so you need to know what the internet is saying about you as well so you can be consistent and truthful and also use the internet to remind yourself because it's possible that three years ago you went back to shanghai and you gave a presentation at a university and during the announcement of the presentation they mentioned all your positions social status in china and that announcement went on to the internet and it's still on the internet so you need to know what that announcement is saying about you because the us government will see this as well and of course you need to have your own attorney because your university's attorney is not your attorney i got a client who told me well you know the university hired an attorney for me because well i'm a faculty member right so when they interviewed me that attorney is in the room well it turns out that attorney is not your attorney it's the university's attorney it can be the university's outside counsel it can also be an attorney an in-house counsel working together with the research integrity office or with the provost so their attorney is not your attorney you need to have your own attorney the things don't do don't delete emails right because if you delete emails they will know that you deleted emails and then they will think you're trying to destroy evidence um don't talk to your colleagues and friends about your cases and concerns this is what professor lieber and harvard did right so he talked to a research associate of him after fbi questioned him at least based on the court filing um he told the research associate not to tell fbi about his thousand talents involvement and then the associate now is a witness in his case working with the prosecution so your conversations your wechat text messages your emails with your colleagues and friends they're not protected by attorney-client privilege so the right person for you to talk to is your lawyer rather than other people who are not protected by privilege um and the last character oh go ahead i was just one quickly mentioned we're at times so yeah if you remember one thing from this presentation from me it's the one thing that's relatively easier for you to do which is to um go back and amend your tax returns and your fba reports if you haven't gotten clean on those accounts thank you so much thank catherine for this presentation and i wanted to just um leave some a bit of time for questions and um we got a few questions here um from folks and um i just want to encourage the audience again to please drop your questions either in our chat box or in the q a portal so um one of the first questions i have here is um and these are for um either peter or katherine this person is asking how do i know if the fbi agent is actually an agent how do i verify the identity of the agent i i don't think you have to worry about fake fbi agents they'll they'll present identification but that is the least of your worries that um pretend fbi agents will be interviewing the problem will be they are real fbi agents not that they're fake all right and then i have another question here if this person asks if i am asked to fill out a conflict of interest form will i need an attorney or can i just fill out the form on my own i mean i i i would say you can do that you're going to have to do this on your own um and just be over inclusive if there's any i mean as catherine has noted the language on these conflict of interest forms has become generally more explicit and more uh open-ended and broader and uh don't be cute you know i mean don't if in doubt list it right and then the fact that a scientist has to ask you this question tells us something right i've been working with you know professors and scientists for years on their corporate projects this is the first time people asking us you know hey i'm just filling out a routine form of this university do i need to have a lawyer um you don't have to there's no requirement you need to have a lawyer but you just need to be correct when you fill out the form because unfortunately the consequence of making these what we think of as administrative or paperwork error can be easily criminalized these days um thank you both and um we got another question here um so oh sorry i'm just trying to find the right one um how do i make sure i follow all the most updated rules and get everything right so i don't get in trouble go don't get into trouble are there resources available to help me that's a great question so uh university forms usually these days universities all use a software so they send you a link you click through right and when you click through look for question marks next to each question chances are when you click that question mark it's going to expand a window will pop out and give you a five minutes webinar about you know what this rule is about um similar to the tax forms there are instructions after instructions but it's up to you to read it so i would say the guidance are definitely out there you just have to read through them the other resource is the university of research integrity office they organize seminars training sessions i know for you tenure the professors out there most of you think i've been doing this for 20 years right i don't need a research integrity officer to teach me how to write a grant proposal only the new post all or the new faculty members need to attend those training sessions well the reality is the rules have changed so if your university research integrity office is organizing these seminars you should attend and obtain a record of your attendance as well thank you and we got another question here um how do i know if i am being investigated um generally you don't um you don't until you're told that you are um so the fbi isn't going to there's no way to confirm or inquire whether you're on your investigation a lot of times the first time you find out you're under investigation is when you get called in by the university well it could be agents showing up at your door um which happens um it could be a search warrant of your home in your office which also happens um or it could be that your university uh dean says could you come in um we have a couple questions and it turns out when you go into the office they got a half a dozen lawyers in there outside counsel security and the dean excuses himself and leaves you to answer all these questions i've had clients have all those things happen to them um other times it is a little bit more benign there'll be email inquiries you know and they can start off i'm pretty low-key and then they tend to escalate and oftentimes when i get involved i find out that they've been answering questions back and forth for six months um and it there's the university will be basically working uh at the behest of nih or national science foundation um and then they pass all that information along in a report to the agency so there's a range of ways that you you would find out so you just have to um you know the the key is once you find out that you're under investigation is to get counsel early on um rather than trying to handle it on your own all right thank you peter and another question i got here is i have heard about searches for electronic devices what are our legal rights for searches well i i it sounds like you're talking about when you're leaving or exiting the country and at that point they have a right to take a look at your device coming in and out of the country um i you're not under any obligation to give them your password but they will try and image your device and they have a right to do that if you're if you're coming uh in or out of the country now if you're in the country and they want to see your your stuff you have no obligation to share that um if it's a university computer of course that's different but if it's your cell phone or your own laptop you simply say you know sorry no yeah most professors communicate through their university emails even on non-university related activities and responsibilities just out of convenience so if you've been communicating with a chinese university using your american university email accounts they have server right so it's their account it's the university's email account so they can get your emails either by imaging your computer or downloading it from the server okay and then the next question i have one here any potential new policy change from the current biden administration regarding this china initiative and i can go ahead and respond first um from advancing justice agc's point of view i mean we're hopeful that the new administration will be open to policy change and reform and um and i don't know if most of you have heard but the recent presidential memorandum countering anti-asian racism can be a first step in what we believe will be a longer road to combating racial bias and discrimination and at advancing justice ajc as i mentioned previously we are doing some advocacy efforts including a sign-on letter um with over 120 organizations and individual signatories to president biden um calling for an end to the justice department's china initiative as well as several other recommendations there may also be a potential upcoming hearing with the house oversight committee of reform so specifically the subcommittee of civil rights and civil liberties um that is also something that we are uh working on uh pushing so hopefully if there is a hearing to come that will also raise more awareness on the hill in general and um peter and catherine i don't know if you guys would like to add anything um your thoughts on new policy changes with the byte administration in 15 seconds i'd say hope hope that it'll change and and refocus um properly on on what it was meant to stop initially which is theft of intellectual property and economic espionage and get off this ridiculous um you know focus on paperwork errors for legal conduct but we don't know if that's really going to change we're just hopeful that it will um but i don't it's anybody's guess and from me you know i noticed that you you know some us attorneys for example lelling from massachusetts uh stepped down he is one of the uh you know maine hawks in the china initiative he um arrested a lot of the professors in the harvard and mit area so that kind of a replacement of us attorneys around the country together with the change of administration that gives me hope that because china initiative is an enforcement initiative right i hope you know given these changes and replacements i think the enforcement hopefully will become more reasonable and proportionate um rather than over overly sellers compared to the underlying mistakes but you know my advice to the audience is well don't count on other people right don't count on the new president and don't count on a different u.s attorney in your district to save your future there are things you can do to protect yourself and your family your career and your freedom that's you know to get your tax clean get your f bar filed get your coi and oar form correctly filled out and don't make mistakes in your nih and other branch applications those are the things you can control and then you can you know take charge of i would focus on these all right great and it looks like we're going just a little bit over time here um but lastly again i um we have provided all of our contact information as well as the speaker's con tax information here um and also how to reach advancing justice ajc's illegal referral line and again if you're interested in setting up a know your rights webinar for your organization or your community you can contact me by email or if you're interested in learning more about the anti-racial provine project in general if you would like to discuss specifically policy advocacy requests if you have those please reach out to my colleague godzilla kusakawa my apologies we were not able to answer all of the questions that you guys had there were an abundance of questions but i hope that this webinar was helpful to you today please feel free to sign up for our email list to stay informed about any updates on the project and again i would also like to thank our speakers today catherine and peter for your contribution and your participation um this has been great and again there will be a recording of the webinar available which will we we will send to all the participants after the webinar so again thank you everyone for joining this webinar and i hope you have a great rest of the day thank you bye thank you bye bye