A Chinese national and resident of Oakland, Calif., pleaded guilty Sept. 3 to conspiring to illegally export radiation-hardened computer memory circuits from the U.S. to China, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Philip He, an employee at Sierra Electronic Instruments, bought 312 radiation-hardened circuits, valued at almost $550,000, from a Colorado manufacturer. ICE said the circuits are categorized as defense articles within the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations, and the exporting of such articles requires licensing from the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. According to the indictment, He provided false certification to the Colorado manufacturer indicating the purchased circuits were for end-use in the U.S.

Barbara Williams, 55, attorney-in-charge of the International Trade Field Office in the Justice Department's Civil Division, died Sept. 6. Williams was a lawyer with the field office in New York since 1994 and was named the attorney-in-charge in 2004. Prior to joining the DOJ, she clerked with U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Richard Goldberg. Williams was also an active member of the Court of International Trade Bar Association, serving as chairwoman for Continuing Legal Education and Professional Responsibility. The DOJ did not comment. She's survived by her husband David and son Jackson. Donations can be made to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center at 1275 York Avenue NY, NY (here).

Two brothers who both worked in law enforcement agencies were arrested Sept. 5 for allegedly conspiring to export high-powered weapons from the U.S. to the Philippines, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Rex Maralit, a New York City police officer, and Wilfredo Maralit, a CBP officer in Los Angeles, participated in a scheme to smuggle assault rifles, sniper rifles, pistols and firearm accessories to the Philippines for sale to overseas customers. ICE said a third brother residing in the Philippines, Ariel Maralit, was also involved and had “identified customers and sought the assistance of his brothers” to purchase and ship the weapons. The brothers responded to customer orders by locating weapons advertised on firearms-brokering websites and arranged to buy the guns through dealers in the U.S. They then “disassembled the weapons and smuggled them out of the United States in disguised shipments,” ICE said.

The Court of International Trade remanded for the third time the duty rate assigned to four companies in the 2008 antidumping duty administrative review on wooden bedroom furniture from China (A-570-890). The Commerce Department had based part of the rate on a small percentage of overall sales with high prices to punish the companies for their lack of cooperation. It set a 43.23% AD rate for Dongguan Sunrise Furniture Co., Ltd.; Taicang Sunrise Wood Industry Co., Ltd.; Taicang Fairmount Designs Furniture Co., Ltd.; and Meizhou Sunrise Furniture Co., Ltd. CIT remanded the rate in June 2012 (see 12060729) and again in April 2013 (see 13040903), because the rate was too high and didn’t reflect commercial reality. This time, Commerce set a threshold of 0.04% of total sales for a single sale to determine the entire rate for a given product. But CIT again found the agency’s reliance on a “minuscule” percentage of sales meant the rate wasn’t rooted in commercial reality, and remanded for Commerce recalculation.

The Eastern New York U.S. District Court dismissed on Aug. 30 an importers’ claim that Panalpina fraudulently induced it to enter into a contract for customs brokerage and freight forwarding services. Michael Kearnis, formerly president of Pinnacle Interior Elements, said Panalpina’s misclassification of Pinnacle’s wood flooring, and subsequent failure to fix the problem, amounted to going back on Panalpina’s promises of a seamless supply chain. Magistrate Judge Ramon Reyes ruled that Panalpina’s errors were at most a breach of contract, and did not amount to fraudulent inducement to sign the contract in the first place, because the broker and forwarder intended to fulfill the contract when it was signed.

Iranian citizen Arsalan Shemirani was sentenced Aug. 15 to 48 months in prison for conspiring to illegal export electronic parts from the U.S. to Iran, ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) said. According to court documents, Shemirani, along with his brother in Iran and a co-conspirator in Hong Kong, exported the parts from the U.S. to Iran via Canada and Hong Kong, without obtaining authorization or a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Shemirani was residing in Canada at the time of the conspiracy and received purchase orders totaling approximately 3,695 electronic components from his brother, who operated an electronics supply business in Tehran, Iran. ICE said the exported items included high performance electronic power equipment like field programmable microchips, analog converters and other testing and power equipment. Shemirani pleaded guilty Jan. 25 to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and to defraud the U.S., ICE said. He was also sentenced to forfeiture in the amount of $187,305.

Motorscience and Motorscience Enterprise agreed to settle alleged Clean Air Act (CAA) violations stemming from 24,478 illegally imported all-terrain, recreational vehicles, according to an Aug. 29 press release from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The vehicles were imported into the U.S. from China for which Motorscience obtained certificates of conformity without testing “to ensure emissions would meet applicable limits on harmful air pollution," EPA said. According to several complaints filed by the U.S. and the state of California in September 2011, Motorscience had arranged for only a limited number of vehicles and then reused those results to obtain certificates of conformity for the other vehicles. For at least three of the other vehicles, EPA said that emissions exceeded the federal limits for hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.

The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce’s Department’s finding that UK Carbon and Graphite is circumventing the antidumping duty order on small diameter graphite electrodes from China. In August 2012, Commerce said UKCG was circumventing the order by sourcing unfinished graphite electrodes from China, putting them through a minor finishing process in the UK, and exporting the product to the U.S. (see 12080817). The court said Commerce justified its analysis, including its decision to apply the China-wide rate to UKCG, as well as its use of surrogate values from other countries to set the price of the Chinese inputs when determining how much value UKCG added in the UK.

Venezuelan Air Force Colonel Guiseppe Menegazzo-Carrasquel was sentenced to 19 months in federal prison for conspiring to export military aircraft engines to Venezuela in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to court documents, Menegazzo-Carrasquel was part of a Venezuelan air force team that “negotiated with Mesa-based Marsh Aviation between November 2005 and February 2008 to refurbish 18 T-76 aircraft engines,” which are designed for the OV-10 Bronco Aircraft. The negotiations took place “under the guise that the engines were intended for civilian use” when they were actually meant for the Venezuelan air force team, ICE said.

A federal judge on Aug. 23 sentenced a woman from Hogansburg, New York, to 18 months in prison for exporting endangered reptiles to Canada, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York. According to the attorney’s office, Olivia Terrance was part of a conspiracy to smuggle over 18,000 endangered and threatened reptiles, including turtles, alligators, iguanas, and chameleons, across the border into Canada in 2009 and 2010. The animals were worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”