A U.S. business owner allegedly exported gun parts and accessories to Russia illegally by routing them through Kazakhstan and mislabeling the shipments to evade authorities, DOJ said last week. Maxim Larin, a Florida resident who owns multiple U.S.-based firearms supply companies, illegally worked with a person in Russia to evade export restrictions and ship items controlled under both the Export Administration Regulations and International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the agency said.
Jinchao Wei, a former sailor with the U.S. Navy, was found guilty this week after being accused of illegally exporting military information and technical data to China. Wei was convicted on several counts, including espionage and illegally exporting technical data related to defense articles in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. His sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 1.
A grand jury indictment unsealed last week charges two people with trying to pay millions of dollars to ship U.S. export controlled technology and weapons to China, offering in some cases more than double the market rate to buy military jet engines, drones, cryptographic devices and other sensitive technologies.
National security attorneys Maria Alejandra del-Cerro and Elyssa Kutner have joined DLA Piper as partners in the national security and global trade practice, the firm announced. Del-Cerro is a former attorney in the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls and joins DLA Piper from Crowell & Moring, where she'd worked as a partner since 2022. Kutner joins the firm from Sidley Austin, where she worked as an associate, then as counsel, since 2020.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky declared a mistrial in a case against defense contractor Quadrant Magnetics for violating export controls after the government sent the company thousands of pages of documents relevant to the case immediately prior to and during the company's trial (United States v. Quadrant Magnetics, W.D. Ky. # 3:22-00088).
A State Department notice declaring that all agency efforts to control international trade now constitute a "foreign affairs function" of the U.S. under the Administrative Procedure Act will ultimately be subject to the discretion of the courts, trade lawyers told us.
A federal court in Kentucky found that Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations licensing requirements for technical data don't violate the First Amendment as a restriction on free speech. Judge David Hale of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky said the licensing requirements "advance important government interests unrelated to the suppression of free speech" and don't burden "substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests" (United States v. Pascoe, W.D. Ky. # 3:22-88).
Joshua Levy, a DOJ attorney who oversaw multiple high-profile export control-related cases, will resign from the federal government Jan. 17, the agency announced this week. Levy most recently served as the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, leading an office that charged two men in December for shipping sensitive drone technology to Iran (see 2412170021) and that fined American defense firm RTX in October to resolve allegations that it tried to defraud the U.S. government and commit defense export control violations (see 2410160058).
A Chinese national was charged for his role in a scheme to illegally ship export-controlled "defense-related technical data" to China and illegally supply the Department of Defense with Chinese-origin rare earth magnets for aviation systems and military items, DOJ announced.
Christopher Stagg, an export controls lawyer and former senior official with the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, has joined Holland & Knight as a partner, the law firm announced. Stagg previously ran his own firm, Stagg PLLC.