Mar
24

Irish Company Indicted for Exports to Iran

Posted by Clif Burns at 7:24 pm on March 24, 2009
Category: Criminal Penalties • Iran Sanctions
Drumcliffe Church
ABOVE: Drumcliffe Church

In an earlier story, we reported on the arrest of a Tehran-based businessman on charges that, among other things, he exported helicopter engines from the United States to Iran. One of the intermediate consignees for that export was, according to court documents, an unnamed “Irish Trading Company.” Today, a 2008 indictment against the “Irish Trading Company” and three of its principals was unsealed. The company in question was Mac Aviation from Drumcliffe, County Sligo, Ireland, and the principals were Tom McGuinn, his son Sean McGuinn, and Sean Byrne.

As it turns out, Tom McGuinn is no stranger to U.S. export laws. He’s on the debarred parties list maintained by the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. Debarred parties are prohibited from engaging in exports of defense services and defense articles. Mr. McGuinn’s debarment was based on a 1996 conviction for violation of the Arms Export Control Act. McGuinn was sentenced to time served and three years of supervised release plus a $50 assessment fee.

Only the docket sheet for the 1996 conviction is available, so we’re not certain what the precise charges against Mr. McGuinn were in that case. However, it seems likely to have arisen from an attempted export of night vision equipment to Iran in 1992 in which Mac Aviation was involved. The night vision equipment, on its way from Ireland to Tehran, was seized in London by British Customs. At the time of the seizure, Mr. McGuinn described himself as an “ex-director” of the company Mac Aviation. In addition, McGuinn said he had “no idea why the stuff was blocked” and that his firm “would never get involved without an export license.”

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11 Comments:

  • Cliff

    I can’t believe that he did not learn his lesson the first time around – if he is in custody again in the US he is more of a fool than I thought. The 1996 conviction resulted from the 1992 seizure of 2nd & 3rd gen pilots goggles in the UK as desribed in the link (but destined for the Iranian Air Force not Iraq) and his conviction resulted from his arrest upon arrival in the US at the start of an intended shopping trip around the aircraft graveyards and associated dealers. The declared end-use had been for Oil Rig support helicopters off the west coast of Ireland. They were described as binoculars on the AWB addressed to IRIAF. Not exactly well concealed from nosy Customs Officers in the UK.

    Obviously he has not learnt that it is not good for your health to visit the US if you have been trading with Iran.

    I wonder what the sentence might be this time (assuming that he is found guilty again).

    Hamish

    P.S. It was me that found them

    Comment by Hamish on March 25th, 2009 @ 3:24 am

  • The three individual defendants are still in Ireland and the U.S. says that it will seek extradition. Unless the export of the helicopter engines from Ireland to Iran was illegal, getting an Irish court to grant extradition will be an uphill battle.

    (An my typo — “Iraq” for “Iran” — has been fixed in the body of the post. Thanks for catching it.)

    Comment by Clif Burns on March 25th, 2009 @ 6:30 am

  • Cliff, love the blog, always good info.

    I see you didn’t comment on this recent article, check it out.

    http://www.mdd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Opinions/Varco0317.pdf

    Craig

    Comment by Craig on March 25th, 2009 @ 10:18 am

  • I dont think the Irish government should extradite these 3 men to a corrupt government like the US.They have the blood of many nations on the ir hands since the war on terror began,they themselves are far bigger criminals than thses businessmen.These men are innoncent until proven guilty and as regards to the charges brought againist Mr.McGuinn in 1996,he stood trial for them charges and was proven innocent.I think since this embrassment for the American government they have been waiting for the opportunity to convict this man.We all know the stunts that this government has pulled off in the past.

    Comment by Pat Fenlon on March 25th, 2009 @ 11:12 am

  • Needless to say, I don’t agree with “Pat Fenlon’s” comment. Also, if he’d clicked through to the docket sheet, he would see that Mr. McGuinn plead guilty to the charges. And, if he’d read my post, he would have seen Mr. McGuinn’s sentence entered after that plea. But Mr. Fenlon was obviously more concerned about ranting about the U.S. than getting the facts straight.

    Comment by Clif Burns on March 25th, 2009 @ 11:29 am

  • @Craig. I did see the Varco opinion and haven’t decided whether to say anything on it or not because it would involve delving into some thorny issues of federal jurisdiction law. That being said, the prospect of a state court trying to determine whether Varco’s employer was violating the ITAR gives me more than a little pause.

    Comment by Clif Burns on March 25th, 2009 @ 11:32 am

  • The Varco case is reminescent of the 1995 case of Schnitzer Steel v. Dept. of the Navy, in which an Oregon scrap company that bid on the ex-USS Bennington (a WWII era Essex-class aircraft carrier) challenged the Dept. of Commerce CCAT determination that the hulk of the carrier (i.e., the hull minus the tower and several tons of wire coated with toxic chemicals and even more tons of asbestos)was scrap that was subject to the EAR and could be exported to India G-DEST rather than a defense article subject to ITAR; and, demanded that the government force the successful bidder, Resource Recovery International, to return the carrier. Although the DC District court held that the case was effectively moot because the hulk of the carrier was already being torn down in India and the plaintiff had not included the exporter as a party, in its opinion the court also stated that the AECA created no private right of action. [The rest of story: After losing in court, the plaintiff had enough political clout to get a Senator and a tame paid conservative think-tank stirred up and forced investigation by both Customs and OEE, but both investigations were concluded without any enforcement action whatsoever.]

    Comment by Hillbilly on March 25th, 2009 @ 12:57 pm

  • How far does the long arm of the US law extend?

    The US can legislate however they please, but they cannot extend this law to foreign shores. Surely there is no hope that these 3 men will be extradited. They aren’t American, they are operating in a different jurisdiction and co-operating with another country.

    Are the US legislating for Ireland now? Did Ireland wake up as the 52nd state? How does this work? The US defines its enemies and people operating on the other side of the world risk imprisonment because the only observe the laws of their own nation. This is madness!

    In addition we all know that the US has a history of paranoid, over-reacting when it comes to Arab countries. What was their flimsy excuse for occupying Iraq? WMD that didn’t exist! Countless dead, continued civil unrest, no end in sight.

    Following 9/11 while the US govt did not have sufficient evidence to pursue a case either in a criminal OR civil suit, BUT they used it as grounds to invade Afghanistan. Countless civilians dead. Another Arab country in turmoil.

    Are the US govt bolstering another ‘flimsy’ file to justify yet another unlawful occupation? What’s the real story here?

    Comment by paddy1974 on March 25th, 2009 @ 5:10 pm

  • The answer to your question is pretty far….especially in these situations because Arms Trading is an international business.

    Let me explain The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to you because you do not undertand the law….The United States is simply enforcing its laws, not forcing its laws on Ireland. IEEPA prohibits U.S. Persons from doing business with Iran and prohibits U.S. Technology from being traded or sold to Iran. It is completely within the U.S. Government’s right to regulate where its technology goes. If these guys want to sell Irish technology to Iran they can go right ahead all day and the U.S. will not interfere. These guys clearly knew they were violating U.S. laws because they went to painstaking efforts to hide the end user of the engines and had them trans-shipped through Malaysia.

    Bottom line…if you are an American doing business with Iran or a foreigner selling U.S. goods to Iran, you are within the United States’ legal jurisdiction.

    Comment by MK on March 26th, 2009 @ 12:16 am

  • MK: Actually, most other countries disagree that the United States has the right to control technology or products once they are lawfully outside the United States. US assertion of “extraterritorial jurisdiction” has been controversial since the beginning of the Cold War (prior to the Cold War, the US never asserted peacetime export controls beyond that necessary to fulfill its obligations under international law as a neutral state vis-a-vis belligerants). The Siberian Gas Pipeline controversy in the 80s left a bad feeling with many allied trading partners and many adopted “blocking laws” to prevent their citizens from complying with the asserted jutid. In fact, in 1996 the EU adopted Regulation 96/2771 which makes cooperation with 3rd state (i.e., U.S.) assertion of extraterritorial jurisdiction unlawful. The EU Commission specifically identified the US embargoes of Cuba and Iran, inlusive of the entire Iran Libya Sanctions Act (which since has been revised to apply only to Iran). McGuin could invoke 96/2271 to prevent any cooperation with the US government by not only the Government of Ireland, but also any private persons (both companies and individuals who might be witnesses or furnish evidence), unless the export would have been regulated by Ireland/EU. So the threshold question is whether these particular critters are Wassenaar Munitions List items or EU Dual USE list items which would have required a license from the Irish or other EU government, or were they just commercial aircraft parts that are not subject to controls in the EU. If its the latter, then McQuin can rest easier, but sometimes the EU countries will extradite not on the export control violation but on fraud charges associated with any misrepresentations made to Customs or other parties in connection with the exports. In such cases the sending country usually requires the US to agree to try the accused only on the fraud charge but not the export violation.

    Comment by Hillbilly on March 26th, 2009 @ 11:51 am

  • At the risk of offending my fellow Patricks, I agree with MK that the US government routinely claims jurisdiction over a number of extraterritorial matters whose only nexus to the US is the presence of US-origin goods. I also agree with Hillbilly that this position remains unsettled generally as a matter of international law. But I think it’s worth clarifying that jurisdiction in this particular case need not rest on so narrow a foundation.

    The DOJ’s press release states that the defendants had numerous contacts with several US companies to arrange for the helicopter equipment exports in question. The defendants are also charged with causing the payment of funds into US banks. This conduct, much of which apparently involved the furnishing of false information to US parties, would likely rise to a level that justifies not only the assertion of personal jurisdiction over the defendants by US courts, but also the assertion of proscriptive jurisdiction over their actions–at a minimum the specific actions relating to the US companies and banks. Even though the defendants are foreign parties alleged to have diverted goods to Iran, this isn’t one of those controversial cases of extraterritorial enforcement of US law turning solely on the presense of US goods. The defendants are charged with having done bad stuff in the US involving US companies and US banks.

    Comment by Pat B. on March 26th, 2009 @ 4:22 pm

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