A Canadian entrepreneur charged in the United States with trying to sell industrial secrets belonging to Tesla has been granted a US$1-million bond, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York.

Klaus Pflugbeil will stay in custody until he can produce US$150,000 in cash and the paperwork is done to cover the rest of the bond with the rights to two houses, spokesperson John Marzulli told The Logic on Friday after an afternoon bail hearing in Brooklyn.

“He will have home detention with his aunt and uncle in Sarasota, Fla., once all of the conditions are satisfied. When he needs to travel to New York he will need to be accompanied by someone from his law firm,” Marzulli wrote in an email.

The Logic was unable to immediately reach Pflugbeil’s lawyer to confirm the terms.

Pflugbeil, who lives in China, used to work for Canada-based Hibar Systems. It developed special technology that helps assemble electric-vehicle batteries very rapidly, though the precision pumps and other devices involved have uses in numerous fields.

Tesla bought Hibar in 2019 and began withdrawing its technology from the wider market.

Prosecutors in New York announced Pflugbeil’s arrest Tuesday, with a sworn complaint alleging that he and co-accused Yilong Shao—whom they had not caught—were ready to sell battery-making technology to undercover agents pretending to be businesspeople setting up a manufacturing line.

The agents had enticed him onto a plane to the United States from Hong Kong on the pretext of a business meeting, and arrested him when he arrived, the complaint said.

Pflugbeil now heads China-based Hife Systems, which has openly marketed precision pumps and parts that are identical to Hibar’s. The complaint alleges that, although Pflugbeil left Hibar a decade before Tesla acquired it, he and Shao used illicitly acquired drawings and other technical materials to replicate parts and systems that now belong to Tesla.

Pflugbeil’s brother Roland, who runs Hife’s Brazilian subsidiary, and Toronto-based Hife director Josef Daniel-Ivad, separately told The Logic that the company has done nothing wrong.