Bristol-Myers-Squibb employee in upstate New York accused of stealing trade secrets

Drugmaker employee in NY charged with trade theft

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A fired Bristol-Myers-Squibb Co. employee stole trade secrets from the drugmaker in a plot to launch his own pharmaceutical business in his native India, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday.

Shalin Jhaveri, 29, of Syracuse, was charged in U.S. District Court with stealing trade secrets and proprietary information from the New York-based company while taking part in a management training program. He was fired Tuesday.

Employed on an immigrant worker’s visa, Jhaveri had been a technical operations associate at Bristol since November 2007. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

A clerk at the federal court in Syracuse said a defense attorney has not been assigned to Jhaveri, who was ordered held without bail.

The thefts of “hundreds of the company’s standard operating procedures” took place over an extended period, “but the most active period was in the last few weeks,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Green.

“Both the company and law enforcement have been aware of his activities for the past several weeks,” he added.

The monetary value of the documents, which were mainly in electronic form, was not disclosed.

In the training program, Jhaveri was rotated through various departments, and the department he was in most recently was one of the more sensitive areas of the company, Green said.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., the world’s No. 15 drugmaker by revenue, is the maker of blockbuster blood thinner Plavix, the world’s second-best-selling drug.