(Bloomberg) -- Uber Technologies Inc. says a guilty plea by its former star engineer is proof that he’s a liar -- and supports its decision to make Anthony Levandowski alone shoulder a $180 million legal award Google won against him.

The ride-hailing firm, which recruited Levandowski in 2016 from Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car program, ended up firing him after the companies became embroiled in one of Silicon Valley’s highest-profile trade-secrets disputes.

While Levandowski’s woes deepened this year -- he agreed to plead guilty to trade-secret theft and was driven into bankruptcy when Google won a contract-breach arbitration case against him -- he was counting on Uber’s promise when it first hired him to provide legal cover, known as indemnification, from his former employer.

Uber now says it has no obligation to reimburse Levandowski for the $180 million.

Levandowski “secretly committed a crime by stealing trade secrets with the intent to use them at Uber,” the company said in a court filing. “If Uber had known that, it never would’ve entered into any agreements with Levandowski.”

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Levandowski’s lawyer, Neel Chatterjee, said Uber can’t renege on the indemnification agreement because it vetted the engineer before hiring him and knew there was reason to be concerned he had taken proprietary information from Google. He said Uber is just trying to wiggle out of its agreement to protect Levandowski “because it did not like the outcome” of his legal fight with Google.“Uber’s assertion that Anthony did not disclose material information to Uber is false,” Chatterjee said in an email.

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