Aviation Services International, Conspiracy to Export Aircraft Components, District of Columbia 2007

A Dutch firm and two of its officers have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to export aircraft components and other goods to Iran in a plot that spanned several years, according to the U.S. government. Aviation Services International, B.V. (ASI), its director Robert Kraaipoel, 66, and sales manager Robert Neils Kraaipoel, 40, each entered a plea of guilty to a one-count criminal information in federal court in the District of Columbia on October 2007.

The U.S. government alleges that between October 2005 and October 2007, the defendants received orders from customers in Iran for U.S.-origin goods that were restricted from being transshipped into Iran. They then contacted companies in the United States and negotiated purchases of materials on behalf of Iranian customers, providing false end-user certificates to conceal that customers in Iran would be the true recipients of the goods.

According to the criminal information, the defendants caused certain companies in the United States to ship the materials to ASI in the Netherlands or to addresses in other countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus. Upon arrival in the Netherlands or these other countries, the ordered materials were repackaged and transshipped to Iran.

For example, the defendants purchased various U.S. electronic communications equipment from a U.S. company between 2005 and 2007, falsely certifying that the equipment was being sent to the Polish Border Control Agency when, in reality, the equipment was being sent to Iran. They arranged for the equipment to be exported from the United States to the Netherlands, and shortly thereafter, the equipment was sent to a customer in Iran.

Aviation Services International, B.V. faces a potential sentence of a $100,000 fine and corporate probation for five years. The two individual defendants each face a potential sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the pecuniary gain or loss.

The investigation was conducted by agents from the Department of Commerce’s Office of Export Enforcement, with assistance from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

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