Iranian Businessman Sentenced to Prison For Illegal Exports to Iran

An Iranian businessman was sentenced to 46 months in prison for illegally exporting carbon fiber from the U.S. to Iran, the Justice Department said Nov. 14. Behzad Pourghannad worked with two others between 2008 and 2013 to export the carbon fiber to Iran from third countries using falsified documents and front companies, the agency said.

Pourghannad worked with two co-defendants, Ali Reza Shokri and Farzin Faridmanesh, to exports “many tons” of the carbon fiber, which can be used in missiles, aerospace engineering and gas centrifuges. While Shokri worked to procure the fiber, Pourghannad served as the financial guarantor for “large carbon fiber transactions,” the Justice Department said. Faridmanesh worked as the transshipper.

Around 2008, Shokri worked with a person in Turkey to arrange to export U.S. carbon fiber to an Iranian company owned by Shokri, the agency said. The company directly purchased the carbon fiber and arranged for it to be exported to Europe and the United Arab Emirates before reaching Iran. In 2009, Pourghannad and Shokri tried but failed to complete another illegal export when their co-conspirator in Turkey purchased carbon fiber from a U.S. supplier. The co-conspirator allegedly arranged for the materials to be shipped to a third country before being sent to Iran, but the authorities in the third country seized the shipment. The Justice Department did not name the third country.

In a third instance, Pourghannad, Shokri, and Faridmanesh arranged for the export of five tons of U.S. carbon fiber, which would be shipped through Georgia before arriving in Iran, the Justice Department said. The scheme involved changing the shipping labels on the carbon fiber to “acrylic” or “polyester” to evade U.S. export controls.