Indian head of an international electronics company and a US firm pleaded guilty on Friday to violating American laws on export of weapons technology.
WASHINGTON: An Indian head of an international electronics company and a US firm pleaded guilty on Friday to violating American laws on export of weapons technology and nuclear power-testing equipment to India, the US justice department said.
Parthasarathy Sudarshan, 47, CEO of Cirrus Electronics, filed his “guilty” plea in the Columbia district court in response to the felony charge of conspiracy to violate various laws, including the Arms Export Control Act and the international traffic in arms regulations.
A resident of South Carolina, Sudarshan supplied microprocessors and other electronic components to Indian agencies, including Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL), which develops and produces ballistic missiles, between 2002 and 2006, the justice department claimed.
“VSSC and BDL are on the department of commerce’s entity list and exports of US-origin commodities to these entities are restricted and require prior authorisation in the form of a license from the department,” the justice department said.
Sentencing is on June 16.
Minnesota-based MTS Systems Corporation was sentenced to two years probation and fined $4,00,000 after it pleaded guilty to repeatedly falsifying documents to illegally export equipment for use in India’s nuclear programme.
The ruling on the MTS Systems Corporation brings to an end a nearly seven-year legal row that involved a number of US government agencies.
Court documents accuse Sudarshan and others at Cirrus of providing fraudulent certificates to US companies claiming the end-users of their electrical components were non-restricted entities in India, when, in fact, the items were for VSSC.
Cirrus has offices in Simpsonville, South Carolina, Singapore and Bangalore. “There were no export licences for any of the shipments to VSSC and BDL. To further conceal from the US government that goods were going to entities in India on the department of commerce entity list, Sudarshan would route the products through the Singapore office of Cirrus and then send the packages to India,” the justice department claimed.
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