WASHINGTON, May 10 (UPI) -- A California company and its top executive have been punished for conspiring to illegally export industrial valves to Iran, the U.S. Justice Department said.
U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii sentenced GWC Valve International to a $300,000 criminal fine, five years of corporate probation and ordered the company to forfeit $410,833.82, the Justice Department said in a release.
Ishii sentenced GWC Chief Executive Officer David Meador to 13 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
GWC Valve International and Meador pleaded guilty last June to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Iranian Transactions Regulations.
Court documents indicate that between July 2005 and May 2008 Meador and others conspired to export financial and technical services related to the sale of the industrial valves to Iran without getting the required licenses and U.S. Treasury Department authorization first. The documents said GWC and Meador received more than $2.16 million worth of orders from Iranian customers for industrial valves, then signed contracts with these customers and manufactured the valves for them.
The defendants also concealed the identity of their Iranian customers by falsely saying the GWC office in the United Arab Emirates was the end-user, or altering or omitting references to Iranian banks and the true end-users in correspondence, the Justice Department said.
