Indian jailed for exporting US military goods

WASHINGTON/HOUSTON: An Indian American businessman was sentenced to 35 months in jail and slapped a $ 60,000 fine by a US court for shipping restricted military technology to Indian government entities engaged in missiles and fighter jet production and space programme.
     
Parthasarathy Sudarshan, 47, CEO of Cirrus Electronics, will serve about 20 months because he has been in federal prison since his arrest in March 2007, US District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled.
    
Sudarshan was convicted of acquiring electrical components with applications in missile guidance and firing systems in the US and supplying them to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and the Bharat Dynamics Ltd between 2002 and 2006, according to court documents.
    
He was also accused of acquiring microprocessors for the Tejas, a fighter jet under development in India.
    
The judge said that Sudarshan broke the law and risked putting nuclear weapon technology into the wrong hands.
     
"This didn't happen one time. It happened time after time after time," Urbina said.
      
Sudarshan was originally charged with 15 counts of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Arms Export Control Act as well as acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He pleaded guilty to one charge in March and the other allegations were dropped.
     
Sudarshan held himself out to be CEO of Cirrus that has offices in South Carolina, Singapore and Bangalore.
     
His attorney had sought a sentence of time served citing that most of the goods sold were of low technology with some costing less than $ 1 a piece and that the entrepreneur had been financially "wiped out".
     
Federal prosecutors sought up to four years in prison.
     
Before sentencing by the Washington court, Sudarshan pleaded to the judge that he had come to the US for a better life and to get a good education for his children.
     
"This (legal) process has been very difficult for me," Sudarshan told the court, and asked to be allowed to return to his family.
     
Later, Urbina asked Sudarshan why he shipped prohibited electronic components through Singapore to India.
     
Sudarshan replied that it happened, in part, because he was ignorant of the law.
     
Urbina was not satisfied with the answer and asked again.
     
Reid Weingarten, Sudarshan's attorney, tried to step in but Urbina stopped him.
     
"I want to know it out of (Sudarshans) mouth," Urbina told Weingarten. "I want a clear, clean, direct explanation of why Mr. Sudarshan did it."
     
Despite his March guilty plea, Sudarshan never really acknowledged that he had broken the law.
     
Weingarten, in seeking a sentence of time already served, said later that the equipment sold by Sudarshan's company, Cirrus Electronics Ltd., was low-tech, with some components costing less than $ one a piece.
     
It wasn't "fair" that the prosecutors accused Sudarshan of endangering national security, he said.
     
"This was not a man who was out to harm the United States," Weingarten said.
     
Weingarten convinced the Justice Department to acknowledge that the value of goods illegally exported by Sudarshan was about $2.4 million, not the $ 4.5 million originally contained in court filings.     

Others convicted of similar crimes received less than 15 months in prison, and Sudarshan should be released to his family, Weingarten said.
      
"He has been financially wiped out," Weingarten said. "He has been separated from his family."
     
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Bratt argued for a stiffer sentence and said that even though some of the technology Sudarshan shipped was inferior to that used by US defence companies, it still aided India in building their ballistic missiles that could house nuclear weapons.
      
"These are nuclear non-proliferation controls," Bratt said. "He made the judgment to make money... and the laws were something to get around and that's what he did."
     
To conceal from the US government that goods were going to entities in India on the Department of Commerce Entity List, the prosecution alleged Sudarshan would route the products through its Singapore office and then send the packages on to India.
     
On two occasions in 2004 and 2006, Cirrus shipped a total of 500 microprocessors to the Aeronautical Development Establishment, a state-run Indian enterprise responsible for the development of the Tejas. There were no licenses for these shipments, they claimed.