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TG-755
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today announced an $860,000 settlement with Agar Corporation, Inc. (ACI) regarding the company's unlicensed export of oil and gas production equipment for use in Sudan in violation of the Sudanese Sanctions Regulations (SSR). The SSR prohibit certain exports to Sudan, including most transactions involving the Sudanese petrochemical industry.
As part of the settlement, ACI also pleaded guilty today in the Southern District of Texas to one count of knowingly and willfully facilitating the exportation of 16 multi-phase flow meters from Venezuela to Sudan through its sister company, Agarcorp de Venezuela, without first having obtained the required authorization from OFAC. The component parts of these flow meters were primarily engineered, fabricated, and purchased in the United States. The guilty plea was announced today by José Angel Moreno, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. As part of the plea agreement, ACI agreed to the payment of a $760,000 criminal penalty and to the forfeiture of $380,000, for a total criminal penalty of $1.14 million. ACI also accepted four years of probation, agreed to institute a comprehensive U.S. economic sanctions compliance program, and agreed to initiate employee training as part of that program.
Today's guilty plea demonstrates the lengths to which some U.S. companies will go to evade U.S. economic sanctions programs through the use of foreign affiliates. OFAC will continue to work with our interagency partners to aggressively pursue violations such as these, said OFAC Director Adam J. Szubin.
The case against ACI was opened by OFAC in 2005 and referred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Office of Investigations in Houston for criminal investigation. OFAC alleged that during the period from April to June 2005 ACI violated the SSR when it used its foreign affiliate to conceal its involvement in the sale and export of petroleum production flow meters to Sudan. The total transaction value for the unlicensed export transactions settled with OFAC was $444,887.
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