A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Oct. 22 in U.S. District Court in Charlotte to trafficking in counterfeit airbags, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Igor Borodin, 27, also pleaded guilty to delivering and causing to be delivered hazardous material, that being airbags, by air commerce in violation of rules and regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Transportation.

A Haitian national pleaded guilty Oct. 18 to entry into a seaport under false pretenses, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Benedick Dextra obtained fraudulent documents under the name of Benedick Louis. Dextra then used those illegal documents to obtain a New York driver’s license and a Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC). This allowed him access to secure areas, such as container terminals in Port Elizabeth, N.J., ICE said.

The Court of International Trade affirmed an International Trade Commission negative injury determination for finished heat sinks in the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations of aluminum extrusions from China (A-570-967). The ITC found injury to U.S. industry by imports of other types of aluminum extrusions, so the International Trade Administration issued AD and CV duty orders. These orders excluded finished heat sinks from the scope, however.

Mohammed Reza “Ray” Hajian of Tampa, Fla. was sentenced Oct. 18 to four years in federal prison, as well as a $10 million fine and one year of supervised release following the end of his prison term, for conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Iranian Transaction Regulations, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Hajian pleaded guilty July 11, along with three of his companies: RH International, Nexiant, and P & P Computers.

A former American Airlines baggage handler was sentenced to life in prison Oct. 16 for his leadership of an international drug trafficking organization, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Victor Bourne led an organization that smuggled narcotics from the Caribbean into the United States through John F. Kennedy International Airport, ICE said. Bourne was convicted in October 2011.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrested a Florida man in connection with a scheme to illegally import dinosaur fossils into the U.S., including a nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton from Mongolia, and a Microraptor skeleton from China. The arrest follows an earlier civil suit seeking forfeiture of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton.

Two metropolitan Detroit residents face criminal charges after their arrest during an enforcement action targeting counterfeit air bags allegedly imported from China, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Samar Ayoub, 39, of Dearborn Heights, Mich., and Hussein Jomaa, 30, of Dearborn, Mich., are charged in a criminal complaint with knowingly trafficking counterfeit merchandise, ICE said. Trafficking in counterfeit merchandise carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

Adverse facts available (AFA) countervailing duty rates must be corroborated just as is the case with AFA antidumping duty rates, said the Court of International Trade, as it remanded the final results of the 2007 administrative review of certain hot-rolled carbon steel flat products from India (C-533-821). CIT took up the issue after a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling in April overturned a CIT remand of an AFA rate applied to a subsidy benefit received by Essar Steel. CAFC said the ITA’s decision to apply an AFA rate was supported by substantial evidence, but the court did not rule on whether the ITA’s AFA rate was reasonable.

The Court of International Trade affirmed CBP’s Harmonized Tariff Schedule tariff classification of tuna imported by Del Monte from Thailand as packaged ‘in oil,’ despite containing at most 2.48 percent oil in the packaging, based on nearly hundred year-old appeals court precedent. CIT also affirmed CBP’s assessment of duties based on the invoice price for the tuna. Del Monte had argued that its Thai supplier did not comply with the terms of the purchase agreement, and later repaid the difference after importation, but CIT said the regulations are clear in requiring CBP to disregard any rebate of the price paid or payable after importation of merchandise.

The Court of International Trade affirmed the International Trade Administration's decision to treat three Chinese companies as a single entity and apply adverse facts available (AFA) to that entity in the antidumping investigation of aluminum extrusions from China (A-570-967). CIT said the ITA was correct to treat the Guang Ya group, New Zhongya, and Xinya as a single entity because of common ownership by single family, among other things. In response to the companies’ challenge of application of AFA to all three companies, CIT said it is common practice to apply AFA to all members of an entity if one fails to cooperate. The combined entity of the three companies was assigned an AD rate of 33.28 percent in the investigation.