NEW YORK // The United States has made a two-pronged move against the transfer of missile and nuclear technology from China to Iran by charging a Chinese metals company with illegal sales and imposing sanctions on six Iranian companies. In New York on Tuesday, a grand jury indicted LIMMT Economic and Trade Co Ltd and Li Fang Wei, its manager, on 118 counts, including suspicion of shipping 15,000 tonnes of specialised aluminium alloy from China to Iran for use in long-range missile production.
In Washington, the US Treasury department also designated six Iranian companies as proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and sought to freeze any of their assets under US jurisdiction and prohibit US citizens from doing business with them. "Materials may be dual-use, but when they are sent to front companies set up by the Iranian military, and the defendants use false end-user certificates and dummy names, there's not much doubt that the use is for weapons," Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, told reporters.
He also said he would request the extradition of Mr Li, who was believed to be in China. The treasury also added Mr Li and eight aliases for LIMMT to its weapons proliferation blacklist. The company was put under treasury sanctions in 2006. Using US law and United Nations Security Council resolutions aimed at preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, Washington has targeted several individuals and companies alleged to be aiding Iran's weapons programme in recent months.
In the most recent case, five Iranian companies were put under sanctions for their alleged connections to Iran's defence industries organisation: Khorasan Metallurgy Industries, Kaveh Cutting Tools Co, Amin Industrial Complex, Yazd Metallurgy Industries and Shahid Sayyade Shirazi Industries. Another company, Niru Battery Manufacturing Co, was named because of its connections to Iran's ministry of defence and armed forces logistics.
Mr Morgenthau said Mr Li used several US banks to transfer money between China and Iran via Europe and the United States. The banks, which were not accused of any wrongdoing because they did not know about Mr Li's activities, included Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. "Our banks have high standards and sophisticated systems to stop these transactions but this conduct was specifically designed to defeat their systems," Mr Morgenthau said.
"We may not be able to shut down Mr Li's factories but we can shine a spotlight on his conduct and the conduct of the foreign banks that permit these types of operations to flourish." The indictment against Mr Li claimed he used his different names and front companies to access the US banking system to provide dollar financing for sales of components to Iran. Iranian banks cannot access dollar financing under measures introduced by the Bush administration so Mr Li used a system involving payments by Iranian banks in euros and dollar transactions by Chinese institutions.
Mr Morgenthau's office said Mr Li's front companies acquired the financing to ship large quantities of components between Nov 2006 and last September and there had been "dozens" of illegal payments for the transactions. In another case, law enforcement officials announced on Monday that Baktash Fattahi, an Iranian national and legal US resident, was arrested in California last week on charges of conspiring to export military aircraft parts to Iran via Dubai. Mr Fattahi and 10 other defendants were indicted by a federal grand jury last week.
The 10 were Amir Hosein Atabaki, Reza Zahedi Pour and Mohammad Javad Mohammad Esmaeil, Iranian nationals; Abbas Haider, an Indian citizen residing in Dubai; Mohammed Javid Yahya Saboni, an Iranian national residing in Dubai; Mahdi Electronic Trading Co, an Iranian business; Planet Commercial Brokerage, a Dubai business; Raht Aseman Co Ltd, an Iranian business; Sahab Phase, an Iranian business, and Sea Speed UAE, a Dubai business.
Also last week, Traian Bujduveanu, a Romanian national and naturalised US citizen, pleaded guilty in a Miami federal court to a charge of conspiring to illegally export military and dual-use aircraft parts to Iran. He also pleaded guilty on behalf of his company, Orion Aviation. Hassan Keshari, his co-defendant, pleaded guilty in January. Bujduveanu was alleged to have sold aircraft parts to Keshari's company, Kesh Air International, for purchasers in Iran and exported the aircraft parts using freight forwarders in Dubai.
Both men are in federal custody awaiting sentencing. sdevi@thenational.ae