TEHRAN: Schuylkill Country Company’s CEO who tried to smuggle machinery equipment to Iran against the U.S trade prohibition has sent to 12 months imprisonment.
The CEO of a Schuylkill County company who pleaded guilty to a plot to smuggle machinery to Iran in defiance of a U.S. trade embargo will serve 12 months of probation.
Helmut Oertmann, the chief executive officer of Hetran Inc. in Orwigsburg, avoided a sentence of about four years in prison when U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane agreed to impose a sentence less than that recommended under federal guidelines.
The company, which manufactures heavy equipment for the steel industry, will also be on probation for 12 months and must pay a $337,500 penalty under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Kane agreed to suspend $500,000 of the fine negotiated with the commerce department.
Teresa Taylor, an attorney with the Akrivis Law Group in Washington, said Oertmann and the company received credit for pleading guilty, accepting responsibility for the crime and cooperating with the government’s investigation.
Taylor also said the investigation found that the machine was not something that could be used for manufacturing weapons and that the technology was not sophisticated enough to warrant an additional penalty.
Hetran and its officials have also taken steps to provide employees with training on federal import and export restrictions to ensure that a similar offense does not occur again, Taylor said.
Iran, which has come under international scrutiny over the last decade for efforts to develop nuclear weapons, is subject to a trade embargo by the United States under a federal law that allows the president to impose sanctions on countries that pose a threat to national security.
American companies are banned from shipping items that can be used for both civil and military purposes without a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
According to court documents, representatives of a company serving the oil and gas industry with offices in Iran and the United Arab Emirates approached Hetran in June 2009 to purchase a horizontal lathe. The machine, worth more than $800,000, is used to peel steel bars into rods for use in the automotive and aircraft industries.
During negotiations, it became apparent to Oertmann and other employees of Hetran that the machine was intended for export to Iran. Knowing that the company was unlikely to obtain a license to sell the machine to an Iranian company, Hetran and co-conspirators falsified the shipping paperwork to indicate the machine was going to another company based in Dubai, court papers say.
U.S. authorities intercepted the machine before it was shipped to Iran, and Oertmann, Hetran, three Iranians and two Iranian companies were indicted by a federal grand jury in Harrisburg in 2012.
Oertmann, 77, of South Manheim Township and the company pleaded guilty in June to a single count of smuggling goods from the United States, which is a felony. Charges against a second employee were dismissed in 2013, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Scranton said.
