Belgian Businessman Caught by Undercover Agents Illegally Exporting to Russia, China, DOJ Says
The U.S. charged Belgian national Hans Maria De Geetere this week in two separate indictments for allegedly helping to illegally export "military-grade technology" from the U.S. to end-users in China and Russia, DOJ said. The agency said the business owner tried to procure more than $2 million worth of illegal exports from undercover government agents, and told one Commerce Department agent that a shipment was destined for Belgium when it was actually meant for Hong Kong.
DOJ said the Belgian government arrested De Geetere and others as part of the investigation. The Treasury Department sanctioned De Geetere this week, and the Bureau of Industry and Security added De Geetere and his affiliated companies to the Entity List (see 2312050046).
In the first indictment, DOJ alleged that De Geetere and Florida resident Eddy Johan Coopmans conspired to export controlled field programmable gate array (FPGA) circuits to Russia and short-wave infrared (SWIR) surveillance cameras to China from 2016 to 2018. The pair allegedly wired over $1.2 million to acquire the items. Coopmans pleaded guilty in October 2022 to the charges (see 2210060017).
To catch De Geetere and Coopmans, the U.S. convinced a New Jersey resident, who the government had previously caught smuggling items out of the U.S., to pose as an illegal goods broker. DOJ said both De Geetere and Coopmans used the WhatsApp messenger to try to buy the FPGA circuits, indicating that the items would be illegally exported to Russia and used by Roscosmos, the country’s state-owned space agency.
DOJ also said both De Geetere and Coopmans met with an undercover U.S. government agent in Belgium in 2016 to discuss buying the SWIR surveillance cameras, and Coopmans said the cameras would be illegally exported to China “so they could be reverse engineered.” They also discussed “false and misleading statements that would be made to hide their illegal activity” from export enforcement agencies.
The agency said De Geetere and Coopmans conspired to smuggle goods out of the U.S. in violation of U.S. export controls, conspired to launder monetary instruments and illegally exported defense articles. DOJ said De Geetere "caused false and misleading statements to be made to legitimate companies that sold FPGA Circuits and SWIR Cameras" and to "government officials who regulate the export of FPGA Circuits and SWIR Cameras."
In the second indictment, DOJ said De Geetere from 2021 to 2023 tried to illegally procure controlled accelerometers, worth over $930,000, for export to China. These devices "measure the vibration, tilt and acceleration of motion of a structure and are often used in aerospace and military systems," DOJ said. De Geetere allegedly gave a BIS agent a false statement in saying the accelerometers were meant for export to Belgium when they were actually meant for China.
De Geetere first contacted the undercover BIS agent in May 2022 about buying accelerometers, the indictment said, adding that the agent was posing as a reseller for a U.S. company. De Geetere sent a purchase order for 6,400 units, declaring a Belgian company as the end user.
"Please do everything according to the rules,” De Geetere wrote. “The Goods [sic] are EAR99,” referring to items classified under the Export Administration Regulations as goods that generally don’t require an export license.
The agent applied for and received the license on behalf of De Geetere, which authorized the shipment to Belgium. But the indictment said De Geetere made “false representations” to the undercover agent and planned to send the accelerometers to a Hong Kong company. DOJ said the shipment was detained and never delivered.
De Geetere faces three counts of making false statements and one count of smuggling goods in Oregon. He faces a maximum five-year prison stint for the conspiracy to smuggle goods charge and for each false statements charge, 10 years for smuggling and 20 years for conspiracy to commit money laundering.