Indian Embassy caught in illegal export of N-technology
* Indian-American businessman worked with Indian mission to evade export laws
WASHINGTON: An Indian embassy employee, only identified as Co-Conspirator A, and an Indian-American businessman have been charged with conspiring to obtain secret weapon technology from American companies.
While the name of the Indian embassy employee is not known the Indian embassy offering no comment the businessman has been named as Parthasarathy Sudarshan, 47, who entered a guilty plea in a federal court on Thursday, suggesting that the Indian government violated a pledge made in 2004 that it would not try to bypass US export-control laws and regulations imposed after the Indian nuclear tests of 1998. The Indian Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
In a separate case, a Minnesota company, MTS Systems Corporation, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years probation and fined $400,000 for repeatedly falsifying documents in order to illegally export equipment for use in Indias nuclear programme.
Evade export laws: Sudarshan, as chief executive of Cirrus Electronics, sought to evade the export laws by arranging for critical parts needed for missiles, space launch vehicles and fighter jets to be shipped to Singapore, which did not require a licence from the Commerce Department, reports the Washington Post. The parts were then secretly rerouted to India.
The documents said that Sudarshan worked closely with an Indian embassy employee and at one point advised him that a shipment of microprocessors for combat aircraft is leaving for Singapore, as we do not want it to be held up at US customs for want of business registration and export code numbers, etc. Sudarshan agreed to cooperate with the investigation as part of his guilty plea and faces a maximum five-year prison term for conspiring to violate two federal laws. khalid hasan
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
