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Carlos
Cardoen |
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- He is Carlos Cardoen, millionaire
entrepreneur-turned-capitalist, Chilean folk hero and wanted fugitive in the United
States. His alleged crime: exporting materials from the United States to build bombs for
Saddam Hussein. Just how a Chilean arms dealer got snarled in the U.S.-Iraq conflict - and
wound up on the board of a winery with ties to Northern California - is a tale of betrayal
and hard-fought redemption. Throughout a bitter 10-year battle with the U.S. government,
Cardoen has maintained that American officials knew about and supported his weapons sales
to Iraq during its eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s. Only after Iraq invaded Kuwait
in 1990 did the United States press charges against him. "They came after me, looking
for someone to blame," he says. In 1993, U.S. prosecutors charged him with violating
export laws and laundering money from Iraq through an American real estate business.
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Efraim
Diveroli |
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- Diveroli is president of AEY Inc., a South Florida company which,
according to U.S. government documents, has done more than $10 million of business with
the U.S. government since 2004. The papers also reveal the company struck it big in 2007
with contracts totaling more than $200 million to supply ammunition, assault rifles and
other weapons to the Afghan National Army and police. The company's contract said it would
get the ammunition from Hungary.
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Hemant
Lakhani |
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- The filing of a criminal complaint
charging Hemant Lakhani with attempting to provide material support to terrorists and
attempting to sell arms without a license. Lakhani, 68, of London, England, flew from
London to John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sunday and was arrested yesterday by
Special Agents of the FBI/Newark Joint Terrorism Task Force, as he was meeting with a
government cooperating witness to complete the sale of a single shoulder-fired
surface-to-air missile. A criminal complaint against Lakhani filed under seal on Monday in
U.S. District Court in Newark alleges that Lakhani went to New Jersey to arrange for the
sale of at least another 50 anti-aircraft missiles to the cooperating witness, who was
posing as a representative of a Somali terror organization.
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Jean
Bernard Lasnaud |
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- For more than four years, Argentina had asked the United
States to detain a French arms dealer, Jean Bernard Lasnaud, who lived in a gated
community in South Florida and offered to sell tanks and Scud missiles through a Web site.
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Monzer al-Kassar |
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- Monzer al-Kassar (born in Nabek, Syria in 1945), also
known as the "Prince of Marbella" is an international arms dealer, and an
accused terrorist. He has resided in Spain since 1984. He is currently detained by the
Spanish government, on charges of aiding terrorists and money laundering, among others.
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Operation Smoking Dragon |
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- Using an anti-terrorism
statute for the first time in the nation, a federal grand jury in
Los Angeles today returned a superseding indictment that accuses two
men of conspiring with foreign nationals to smuggle into the United
States shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down
aircraft.
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- The new indictment charges Chao
Tung Wu, 51, of La Puente, California, and Yi Qing Chen, 41, of
Rosemead, California, with conspiracy to import missile systems
designed to destroy aircraft. This statute, which was enacted in
December 2004 as part of an intelligence reform package, carries a
mandatory minimum penalty of 25 years and the possibility of life
without parole in federal prison.
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Yehuda Abraham |
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- Separate criminal complaints were
filed against Yehuda Abraham,76, a New York City jeweler and money remitter, and
Moinuddeen Ahmed Hameed of Malaysia. Hameed arrived from Malaysia yesterday allegedly as
part of the planned sale of another 50 missiles. Hameed was to collect an initial payment
of $500,000 from the government cooperating witness, according to the complaint. Both men
are charged with conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Abraham
and Hameed: conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, five years
and a $250,000 fine.
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