Canadian Company, President Fined for Scheme to Export Technical Data to China

A Canada-based contractor for the U.S. Navy and the company’s president were fined for their involvement in a scheme that included unlicensed exports to China and giving false information to the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement, the Justice Department said in a Dec. 4 press release. The company, OceanWorks International Corp., and its president, Glen Omer Viau, were fined $84,000 and $25,000, respectively. Viau was credited for time served.

Beginning in 2016, OceanWorks hid from Commerce’s OEE the “true nature and extent” of its transfer of U.S. Navy “technical data” to China, the press release said. The company allegedly was working with an unnamed Chinese company to transfer the “design and construction of remotely-operated submarine rescue vehicles” to China’s People’s Liberation Army, the Justice Department said. OceanWorks intended to transfer the data despite Commerce issuing a “formal determination” that the vehicle's “pressurized rescue module” could not be exported to China without a license.

But in 2016, after the Chinese company bought OceanWorks and hired Viau as president, OceanWorks sent data to China, including “multi-page technical drawings” on the pressurized rescue module, the Justice Department said. OceanWorks exported the data to help with a proposal to develop a “similar submarine rescue vehicle” for China’s military, the press release said. “At least one” of the drawings was subject to U.S. export controls and required a license.

In 2017, after the Canadian government ordered the divestiture of the OceanWorks acquisition, the company filed a voluntary self-disclosure to Commerce admitting to export violations that occurred before Viau became president. But the company did not disclose that its parent company in China “sought to enter the same industry as the U.S. Navy” and that OceanWorks was working to design a submarine rescue system for China’s military, the Justice Department said.