Chicago entrepreneur jailed for a year for illegally exporting computer equipment to Pakistan

Washington DC: A Chicago-based executive of Pakistani origin has been sentenced to a year in prison for illegally exporting computer equipment to a Pak nuclear research agency, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday.

Obaidullah Syed, 67, had last year pleaded guilty to conspiring to export goods from the US without a license from the Department of Commerce and to submit false export information. US District Judge Mary Rowland on Tuesday sentenced Syed to a year and a day in federal prison. Prior to sentencing, Syed forfeited USD 247,000 of criminally derived cash to the US government.

According to federal prosecutors, Syed owned two companies — Pakistan-based Business System International Pvt Ltd, and Chicago-based BSI USA. The companies provided high-performance computing platforms, servers, and software application solutions. Syed admitted in a plea agreement that from 2006 to 2015 he conspired with his company’s employees in Pakistan to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by exporting computer equipment from the US to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission without obtaining the required authorisation from the US Department of Commerce. The PAEC is a Pakistani government agency designated by the US government as an entity which may pose an unusual or extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

Syed further admitted that he and his associates lied to US-based computer manufacturers that the illegal shipments were intended for universities in Pakistan or Syed’s businesses, when, in fact, they knew each shipment was meant either for the PAEC or a research institute that trained the agency’s engineers and scientists.

In so doing, Syed and his company caused the US-based computer manufacturers to submit to the US government shipping documents that listed false end-users for the US-origin goods, undermining the US government’s ability to stop the illegal shipments, federal prosecutors said.