BOSTON
A Chinese national who plead guilty in U.S. District Court in Boston in connection with supplying Iran with goods which could be used to make nuclear weapons-grade uranium will be sentenced next month, according to authorities.
Sihai Cheng, a/k/a Chun Hai Cheng, a/k/a Alex Cheng, 35, a citizen of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), plead guilty last week to two counts of conspiring to commit export violations and smuggle goods from the U.S. to Iran and four counts of illegally exporting U.S. manufactured pressure transducers to Iran.
Cheng will be sentenced on Jan. 27 and is facing more than 80 years in prison, officials said.
In 2013, officials said Cheng was charged in an indictment along with Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, an Iranian national, and two Iranian companies, Nicaro Eng. Co., Ltd. and Eyvaz Technic Manufacturing Company, with conspiring to export, and exporting, highly sensitive U.S. manufactured goods with nuclear applications to Iran from at least 2009 to 2012.
In December 2014, Cheng was extradited from the United Kingdom to this county.
He has been in custody since that time. Jamili remains a fugitive. The U.S. government, through Interpol, has requested his arrest to face prosecution in the U.S., officials said.
From February 2009 through at least 2011, Cheng, Jamili, and a third individual conspired along with others in the China and Iran to illegally obtain hundreds of U.S. manufactured pressure transducers manufactured by MKS Instruments, Inc., a company headquartered in Massachusetts, and export them to Iran.
MKS Instruments is not a target of this investigation and has been cooperating in this matter, according to authorities.
Pressure transducers can be used in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium and produce weapons-grade uranium and are therefore subject to strict export controls, officials said.
They cannot be shipped from the U.S. to China without an export license or shipped from the United States to Iran at all.
Cheng admitted to causing the export of 185 pressure transducers from the United States to Iran in 2009.
Initially, the parts were exported to the PRC using fraudulently obtained U.S. Department of Commerce export licenses.
When they arrived in the China, Cheng inspected them in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and removed their U.S./MKS serial numbers to conceal the fact that he was violating U.S. law, officials said.
Officials said Cheng knew that the MKS pressure transducers being exported to Iran were being given to the Government of Iran.
Jamili advised Cheng that the Iranian end-user was Kalaye Electronic Company, which the U.S. Government designated as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction in 2007 for its work with Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program.