Florida resident Victor Mones Coro was sentenced to 55 months in prison for violating U.S. sanctions on Venezuela by chartering private flights for top Venezuelan officials, the Department of Justice said March 17. Sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Mones Coro provided millions of dollars in charter flight services to former Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami, his frontman Samark Lopez Bello, Venezuelan Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno and President Nicolas Maduro's 2018 campaign for president. The chartered flights violate the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions on the Venezuelan officials for their role in subverting democracy and proliferating authoritarianism. Mones Coro also will pay a $250,000 fine and serve two years of supervised release.
The Bureau of Industry and Security fined a California-based satellite communications company $122,000 for illegally exporting controlled goods to Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil. BIS said the company, Comtech Xicom Technology, exported more than $150,000 worth of “traveling wave tubes” (TWT) without licenses, a March 18 order said.
Dual U.S.-Mexican citizen Jessica Johanna Oseguera Gonzalez pleaded guilty on March 12 to engaging in financial dealings with Mexican companies that had been identified as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers, the Department of Justice announced in a press release. Oseguera Gonzalez, the daughter of Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion head Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, aka “El Mencho,” faces a maximum of up to 30 years in prison and is set to face sentencing on June 11. She pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act by engaging in property transactions with six Mexican businesses that had been designated by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control will allow for stock in Luokung Technology to be traded on U.S. exchanges until May 8, the company said in a March 11 news release. Luokung was previously designated as a Chinese military company and was scheduled for delisting on the NASDAQ on March 15. The company is fighting the designation in court, though a temporary restraining order request was dropped at Luokung's request due to the OFAC decision on March 11. Another Chinese company, Xiaomi, was recently granted a preliminary injunction over its designation (see 2103150035). Due to news of the court ruling in Xiaomi's favor, Luokung's stock shot up March 15, according to a press report on the NASDAQ website.
Fujairah International Oil & Gas Corporation, an oil company owned by Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, the ruler of the emirate of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, claims that it owns oil seized by the U.S. Filing their ownership claim in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Fujairah said it purchased the oil from an undisclosed Iraqi supplier and sold it to an unidentified Chinese buyer, where the oil was heading when it was seized. The Department of Justice alleges Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and IRGC-Qods Force, both U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, schemed to deliver the oil to a customer abroad and that the origins of the oil were disguised using ship-to-ship transfers, falsified documents, and other means to trick the owners of the Liberia-flagged Achilleas -- the ship the oil was seized on -- into transporting the oil (see 2102030018).
The Bureau of Industry and Security denied a New Jersey man export privileges after he illegally exported electronic components to Russia, BIS said in a March 8 order. BIS denied Alexander Brazhnikov export privileges for 15 years. Brazhnikov pleaded guilty to the charges in 2015 and was sentenced to 70 months in prison in 2016 (see 1607010044).
Alex Yun Cheong Yue was sentenced March 3 in federal court in Boston for illegally exporting cesium atomic clocks to Hong Kong, the Department of Justice announced March 5. The South El Monte, California, man was sentenced to time-served of one day along with three years of supervised release, one year of which must be served in home confinement, and is prohibited from engaging in any import or export business during the supervised released time. Yue was arrested and charged in 2019 and pleaded guilty in August 2020 to conspiring to procure the cesium atomic clocks and export them to Hong Kong without obtaining the required export licenses. Wai Kay Victor Zee of Hong Kong and Premium Tech Systems, Ltd. also were charged (see 2008110041). Cesium atomic clocks are used in global positioning systems, network timing protocols, encryption programs and national defense and space applications.
A Chinese businessman in Hong Kong allegedly conspired to steal technology from General Electric to create his own startup company, the Justice Department said Feb. 26. The agency charged Chi Lung Winsman Ng with plotting with a GE engineer to steal trade secrets from the company to manufacture and sell “silicon carbide metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors,” or small electronic semiconductors. Ng and the engineer allegedly developed a business plan for their startup that they planned to present to potential Chinese investors for what they said would become a $100 million company. The Justice Department did not name the engineer. It said it has “no evidence that there was an illegal” technology transfer to any Chinese company and said it has not yet arrested Ng. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.
The Department of Justice indicted eight people on charges related to an international drug trafficking conspiracy, which included attempts to commit export violations, the agency said Feb. 26. The eight, including Debbie Mercer and Kayleigh Moffett, both of Oklahoma City; Federico Machado of Florida; and Carlos Villaurrutia of McAllen, Texas, allegedly worked to buy and illegally register aircraft under foreign corporations for export to other countries, Justice said. Some aircraft were used by transnational criminal groups in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico to smuggle “large quantities” of cocaine into the U.S., with sales proceeds sent back to Mexico to buy more aircraft and cocaine, the Justice Department alleged.
In a case against an Iranian banker accused of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran, Judge Alison Nathan for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York lambasted federal prosecutors over their mishandling of evidence and dereliction of responsibility. Stopping short of finding them guilty of knowingly withholding crucial information or intentionally misrepresenting facts to the court, Nathan in a Feb. 22 ruling called for a full investigation of the prosecutors' actions by the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility and said she hopes the government's reforms on evidence handling training will ensure that similar action is not repeated.