A 48-year-old Massachusetts man was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in a scheme involving financing of international printing press sales, the Department of Justice said May 20. James Bender, former senior vice president of trade finance for Sovereign Bank, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He worked with Paul Wilson, former manager of international trade finance for Goss International Americas Corporation, to defraud foreign companies that purchased commercial printing presses from Goss. Wilson worked to ensure Export-Import Bank credit insurance for loans extended to Goss's foreign customers, while Bender arranged for his Bank to purchase most of the loans Goss extended to its foreign customers. Bender and Wilson created two shell companies, sending fake invoices for loan underwriting services totaling more than $200,000 to two Brazilian and two Mexican companies, DOJ said. Bender Wilson pleaded guilty last year to three counts of wire fraud, and was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Bender was convicted after a jury trial in United States District Court in New Hampshire.

The owner of a Colorado steel supply company was sentenced to more than two years in prison for working to defraud the Export-Import Bank of more than $11 million, the Bank announced May 20. Luis Moy, a 47-year-old permanent legal resident of the U.S., pleaded guilty last year to wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. From 2004-2008, Moy acted as the exporter in 11 fake Ex-Im insured or guaranteed loans, totaling $11,183,275, Ex-Im said. Moy admitted that he and his partners planned to misappropriate the loans so they could personally use the money. In addition to his prison term, Moy was sentenced to 60 months of supervised release and ordered to pay the fake loan amount in forfeiture, Ex-Im said.

The Court of International Trade sent back to the Commerce Department its final results from the 2008-09 antidumping administrative review and new shipper review on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam (A-552-801). Commerce itself requested remands on several issues related to valuation of surrogate inputs. In response to challenges by domestic industry, CIT also remanded the agency’s selection of Bangladesh instead of the Philippines as the surrogate country, as well as allegations of ministerial errors.

The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department’s decision to end an antidumping new shipper review for a Chinese company because of a single sale of subject merchandise produced by a manufacturer subject to the original investigation. Pujiang Talent Diamond Tools challenged the agency’s rescission of a new shipper review of diamond sawblades from China (A-570-900), arguing that, despite such a requirement in Commerce’s regulations, rescinding on the basis of a single sale went too far. But the court found that a decision by Commerce to go against its own regulations and not rescind wasn’t a choice the agency could make.

The U.S. District Court for Northern California extended the time period for the Food and Drug Administration and the Center for Food Safety to come up with a timeline for implementation of Food Safety Modernization Act regulations. The District Court had ordered FDA to adhere to a schedule for FSMA rulemaking in April, due to missed deadlines for rules that the court had deemed illegal (see 13042402). But concerned that its own dates would be arbitrary, the court instead ordered the Center for Food Safety and the Food and Drug Administration to agree to a timeline by May 20. The new deadline for the rulemaking schedule is June 10.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a lower court decision affirming the non-individual separate rate calculated for Yangzhou Bestpak in the antidumping duty investigation on narrow woven ribbons with woven selvedge from China (A-570-952). The Commerce Department had assigned Yangzhou Bestpak an AD rate based on a simple average of the two mandatory respondents’ AD rates. One of the mandatory respondents had a de minimis AD rate, while the other had been assigned an adverse facts available rate because of noncooperation, which meant Yangzhou Bestpak’s simple average AD rate was half of the AFA rate, despite the company’s cooperation.

The D.C. federal District Court dismissed PRP Trading’s attempt to gain release of several shipments of aluminum extrusions it contends were mistakenly seized for lack of country of origin markings. The Court of International Trade had transferred the case to the District Courts in October, after finding it had no jurisdiction because the shipments had been seized before PRP Trading filed suit (see 12100331). But according to the D.C. court, PRP Trading requested the case be transferred to the wrong district -- it should have brought suit in Puerto Rico -- and in any case the company didn’t complete all required actions at the administrative level before CBP.

The Court of International Trade’s decision on CBP enforcement of patent exclusion orders in Corning Gilbert v. U.S. will stand, after the U.S. government withdrew its appeal May 15. In February, CIT ordered CBP to admit coaxial cable connectors imported by Corning Gilbert, but found by CBP to be subject to an International Trade Commission general exclusion order for patent infringement, and excluded from entry into the U.S. (see 13020405). Corning Gilbert was not a party to the ITC Section 337 investigation that resulted in the general exclusion order, and so the ITC never specifically found that the company’s connectors infringed the relevant patents. Because there was no ITC finding that was directly applicable, and CBP should have undertaken a thorough analysis of whether Corning Gilbert’s connector in particular violated the patents covered by the general exclusion order, the court said. The government's motion did not include detail on why it was withdrawing its appeal. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted the government motion May 16.

“Safe berth warranties” are an express assurance of a ship’s safety when coming into a port, and not just a promise that the guarantor will perform due diligence, said the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as it overturned a lower court’s judgment against the owner of an oil tanker associated with a spill. Frescati Shipping Company is attempting to recoup some of the $180 million it paid out in cleanup costs and ship damages after a 2004 oil spill in the Delaware River near Paulsboro, N.J. The appeals court also found that Frescati could benefit from the safe berth warranty, even though it was not a party to the original agreement. Furthermore, the “named port exception” to safe berth warranties does not apply to hazards that are unknown to parties and that are not reasonably foreseeable, the 3rd Circuit said, and so does not apply in this case where a submerged ship anchor caused the spill.

The antidumping duty orders on ball bearings from Japan and the United Kingdom are set to be reinstated, after the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided May 16 to reverse several lower court rulings. The Court of International Trade remands had resulted in the International Trade Commission changing its affirmative injury determinations from its sunset reviews to negative ones. That led to revocation of the ball bearings orders for Japan and the U.K. in July 2011. But the appeals court said that, contrary to the lower court’s findings, the ITC injury findings were supported by record evidence, and should have stood.