Iranian’s imprisonment shows murkiness of export laws

HOPEWELL, Va. — Federal agents intercepted the wealthy Iranian entrepreneur at a U.S. airport, questioned him about his business and charged him with illegal export of Americanmade satellite equipment to his native country.

Seyed Amin Ghorashi Sarvestani pleaded guilty soon afterward, but changed circumstances now have encouraged him to challenge his 30-month prison sentence.

Since his plea, the federal government has approved for export to Iran the very products he was convicted of helping ship, his lawyers say. Then federal prosecutors in New York told a judge after the sentencing hearing that they had mistakenly exaggerated the equipment’s capabilities. The judge hasn’t moved to change the sentence, though lawyers for both sides are continuing to press their arguments.

Whatever happens, the case illustrates the complexity of laws in which actions banned one year may become legal the next and where one government priority, controlling exports in the name of national security, can brush up against another — in this case, promoting Internet freedom for Iranian citizens.

“I am neither an activist nor politically motivated,” Sarvestani, 47, wrote from prison in an email to The Associated Press explaining his business of providing satellite-based Internet communications to Iran. “I am simply a citizen of the Earth who believe the Internet is a true miracle in mankind history.”

The Justice Department has stepped up enforcement of export restrictions in recent years, winning convictions in the illegal export of microwave amplifiers to China, defence missile batteries to Iran and military aircraft engines to Venezuela, among others. While the U.S. imposes stringent restrictions on doing business in Iran, the “devil is in the details” in this area of law because both regulations and U.S. foreignpolicy interests can change, said Chicago attorney Daniel Collins, an export controls expert and former federal prosecutor.

“Knowing what you can and can’t do is not as straightforward as you might think,” he said.

In Sarvestani’s case, there’s no dispute that he broke the law, though he contended in an interview at prison that his crimes were more the result of negligence than intent.

Prosecutors say the millionaire entrepreneur, with an electronics background and diverse business holdings that over the years have included edible oils, marine equipment, pizza shops and food distribution, understood the law and intentionally subverted it through his dealings with interrelated companies in the United Arab Emirates. They say he conspired over several years to ship the technology through other nations to conceal that it was destined for Iran and urged employees to be careful to avoid getting caught. He’s been in custody since his 2012 arrest at Washington’s Dulles International Airport.

On May 30 of last year, three weeks after his guilty plea, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control legalized for export to Iran smartphones, satellite phones, anti-viral software and other technology related to Internet communication.

The policy change was billed as part of an effort to connect the Iranian public to the world through communications. U.S. President Barack Obama, in a March 2012 statement, warned that Iran’s “electronic curtain” was cutting off the country’s citizens from the rest of the world, blamed the government for jamming satellite signals to shut down television broadcasts and said the “freedom to connect with one another” was a basic right.