Florida munitions dealer arrested

MIAMI BEACH, Fla., June 20 (UPI) -- A Miami Beach, Fla., munitions dealer was arrested on charges of selling prohibited, misrepresented Chinese weaponry to the U.S. government, officials said.

Efraim Diveroli, president of AEY Inc., and three of his employees were arrested Thursday night and Friday morning in Florida, the Miami Herald reported Friday.

They are accused of conspiring to misrepresent the types of munitions they sold to the U.S. Department of Defense as part of a $300 million Army weapons contract to supply allied forces in Afghanistan.

Diveroli's government weapons license was suspended in late March, after The New York Times reported he had allegedly misled the Army by saying that most of his machine-gun cartridges were Hungarian -- not Chinese.

While Diveroli indicated that the rounds of ammunition for AK-47s and other assault rifles were made in Hungary between 1965 and 1975, the Army discovered that most of the munitions were manufactured in China between 1962 and 1974, the newspaper reported.

AEY Inc. landed its first military contract in 2004, generating revenue of more than $1 million. Last year, he won government contracts worth $200 million.