A U.S. federal court sentenced a Lebanese national to 44 months in prison for conspiring to export drilling rigs to Iran, the U.S. Justice Department stated on Monday.
Brian Assi, 63, of Beirut, was convicted in October for trying to defy U.S. sanctions by moving millions of dollars’ worth of drills from a Florida-based company to Iran via Turkey.
“Assi and his Iranian co-conspirators orchestrated the scheme by locating an Iraq-based distributor to serve as the forward-facing purchaser of two U.S.-origin blasthole drills from the U.S. subsidiary of Assi’s employer,” the department stated.
The department added that the drills are “a type of heavy machinery used to create holes in the ground that are then filled with controlled explosives for mining.”
Assi worked with Iranian co-conspirators to export the drills from the United States to Turkey and then to Iran, transferring $2.7 million in the process, according to the department.
“The defendant threatened U.S. economic and national security by conspiring and concealing his efforts to circumvent our export controls to provide heavy machinery to Iran, a designated state sponsor of terrorism for the past 40 years,” stated John Heckin, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida.
