A former government scientist faces criminal charges after allegedly downloading thousands of work files from the Department of Natural Resources to external storage drives to further a new career in China, court records show.
According to a security report prepared by Natural Resources, the accused, 66-year-old Dennis Lu, has expertise in technology that can be used to purify graphite, a critical mineral for nuclear and defence industries and rechargeable batteries.
The Crown, citing investigators in court filings, alleges that Mr. Lu in 2023 downloaded files to a hard drive with a folder labelled “Projects China.”
Mr. Lu is charged under the Criminal Code with two counts of unauthorized use of a computer and one count of breach of trust relating to his job as a public servant. The allegations against him have not been in proven in court.
A filing by the Crown says investigators believe that Mr. Lu joined China’s controversial Thousand Talents Program (TTP), a state-run recruitment initiative aimed at attracting high-level scientists, engineers, and researchers – both Chinese nationals working abroad and non-Chinese experts – to bring their expertise, research and industry connections to Chinese universities, labs and companies.
The Crown also alleges that he planned to work at a Chinese university while still employed by the federal government.
It based this on electronic devices seized during the investigation.
“Analysis from the devices also showed that Lu was part of China’s TTP, and he had agreed to get a job in China at Southeast University as part of this program and get compensation for it while he was still employed at NRCan,” a filing by Crown attorneys says, using shorthand for Natural Resources Canada.
Mr. Lu denied joining the Thousand Talents Program when talking to government investigators, saying that he was approached in 2009 but declined, according to a Crown court filing.
He worked at Natural Resources for nearly 27 years and retired in August, 2023. A court filing by his defence lawyers, Reem Zaia and Michael Nesbitt, said his research specialties were carbon capture and decarbonization. Mr. Lu “was promoted multiple times and received numerous service sector awards.”
The charges against Mr. Lu were filed in August, 2024, and May 2025, and didn’t come to public attention until this week. His case is expected to go to trial in early 2027.
Ms. Zaia declined to comment on the accusations and charges. “I can tell you that my client maintains” his innocence, she said. “We are dealing with the allegations before the court, and we won’t be making any statements to the media.”
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An August, 2023 security report by Natural Resources offered a more extensive survey of Mr. Lu’s work. It said he was employed in the field of “electrically heated fluidized bed technology development” with applications including upgrading graphite, and lithium-ion battery production, as well as metals production, carbon capture and “oxy-fuel combustion technology development for zero emissions energy production.”
A Crown filing offering a synopsis of the findings of the probe into Mr. Lu says Natural Resources began investigating in December, 2022 after “receiving information” from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. While he was under scrutiny, Mr. Lu took leave without pay in early 2023 for about four months to visit family in China and “requested to work at Chinese universities during that time.” This request was denied.
After he returned to Ottawa, the department started monitoring Mr. Lu’s actions on their computer network “and saw that he downloaded 2,602 unauthorized documents onto a personal USB drive and an external hard drive” on July 7 and Aug. 9 that year, the filing says.
Natural Resources also saw that Mr. Lu “unsuccessfully attempted to access a Chinese cloud service from his work laptop” during that period. His account was eventually suspended, and he was terminated on Aug. 26, 2023, the Crown said in its filing.
The scientist then moved to China full time in September 2023, it said. Before leaving, he returned his work phone and laptop as well as two USB drives but did not return his personal external hard drive “which he used to download the unauthorized documents,” the Crown said.
“That hard drive was, however, never found at Lu’s home or in his vehicle. Investigators believe it was brought and left in China by Lu after his termination from NRCan,” the Crown said.
His defence team noted in a January, 2026 filing that despite the surveillance of their client’s activities at work “there is no evidence that any documents or proprietary material were transmitted to or reproduced for a third party.
It said that despite surveillance of their client’s activity at work, the department failed to find any proof that Mr. Lu “sent any proprietary material to a foreign entity.”
Mr. Lu’s lawyers also noted that Natural Resources has acknowledged that thousands of employees used USB drives to store and transfer data.
According to a court filing by his defence team, CSIS apparently briefed Natural Resources three times about Mr. Lu in recent decades.
Mr. Lu’s defence is seeking more information about these briefings, noting in a court filing that Natural Resources’ manager of investigation, Amanda Black, has said “CSIS was in contact with NRCan at various points in time for the last twenty years raising ‘concerns’ based on ‘red flags’ that they wanted NRCan to ‘look into’.”
According to Ms. Black, the defence filing says, the first briefing was more than 20 years ago and the second about 10 years ago, neither of which led to Natural Resources taking action.
And the third time, in February, 2021, CSIS briefed Natural Resources’ Chief of Security about Mr. Lu, which spurred an internal investigation to monitor his network use with NRCan in January, 2023.
“The purpose, nature, content of and justification for all CSIS briefings is unknown to the defence,” Ms. Zaia and Mr. Nesbitt wrote in a Jan. 6, 2026 court filing.