Iranian-American Citizen Pleads Guilty To Dodging US Export Laws

Department of the Treasury Seal in Treasury building in Washington, DC
Department of the Treasury Seal in Treasury building in Washington, DC

An Iranian-American dual citizen pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to illegally provide the Islamic Republic with US goods, technology and services. 

According to documents by a federal court in Brooklyn, Kambiz Attar Kashani and his co-conspirators, who were first charged in January, used two United Arab Emirates’ companies to evade US export laws between February 2019 and June 2021. 

Kashani acted at the direction of an arm of the Central Bank of Iran, which according to the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) materially assisted, sponsored or provided financial, material or technological support to Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah and to the Qods Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). 

The United States designated Hezbollah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on October 8, 1997, and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) on October 31, 2001, and listed the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 2019 as part of the “maximum pressure” campaign that then-President Donald Trump imposed on Iran after pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Kashani faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and he has agreed to pay a $50,000 fine, in addition to any forfeiture owed. 

The 44-year-old, who was arrested in January, provided products such as subscriptions to proprietary software, fixed attenuators, power supplies and storage systems to the government of Iran.

To procure the items, he allegedly used two United Arab Emirates companies as fronts to deceive multiple US technology companies.