(Adds Treasury, Justice, Fokker statements, other details)
WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) - Dutch company Fokker Services
B.V. has agreed to pay a $10.5 million civil penalty to settle
charges that it illegally shipped aircraft parts and other
technology to Iran, Sudan and Myanmar, U.S. authorities said on
Thursday.
"By illegally exporting aircraft spare parts to designated
countries, (Fokker) flagrantly violated U.S. sanctions laws and
this illicit activity will not be tolerated," said Adam Szubin,
director of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control
(OFAC).
The action followed an investigation by OFAC and other
federal agencies, the Treasury Department said in a statement.
The countries are subject to U.S. sanctions. The Commerce
Department's Bureau of Industry and Security had charged Fokker
with 253 breaches of rules on the export of goods controlled for
national security, missile technology and anti-terrorism
purposes.
The company would forfeit an extra $10.5 million under a
deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of
Justice, the Commerce Department said.
According to court documents, between 2005 and 2010 Fokker
exported and re-exported aircraft parts, technology, and
services to customers located in Iran, Sudan, and Myanmar.
"Fokker Services knowingly and willfully engaged in this
criminal conduct, fully aware of the application of U.S. export
laws, an issue which was repeatedly raised internally with the
company's management," the Justice Department said.
Examples of the workarounds used by Fokker and its employees
included deliberately withholding aircraft tail numbers to
U.S.-based repair shops, providing false tail numbers to U.S.
and UK companies and repair shops, and stating that the parts
submitted for repair by U.S.-repair shops were to be used as
"stock" parts.
Fokker "treated U.S. export laws as inconveniences to be
'worked around' through deceit and trickery," said Ronald
Machen, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Fokker Services in June 2010 made a disclosure of potential
violations, in which the company acknowledged and accepted
responsibility for its unlawful conduct.
"The company engaged a law firm to advise on its export
control requirements, and that's when the violations were
discovered and disclosed to U.S. authorities," a Fokker
spokesman said.
The employees involved in the transactions had been subject
to disciplinary proceedings, he said, without providing further
details.
Fokker Services maintains the fleet of aircraft made by
Fokker, the storied Dutch manufacturer of military aircraft and
civilian airliners that went bankrupt in 1996.
Among the illegal transactions cited by the United States
were 99 involving Iran Air, which according to the online
database www.airfleets.net, has 17 active Fokker twin-engined
jetliners in its fleet, dating to the early 1990s, before Europe
applied sanctions to aircraft purchases.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Krista Hughes, additional
reporting by Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam and Tim Hepher in
Paris; Editing by Ros Krasny and Bill Trott)
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