A businessman who once worked for defense contractor Lockheed Martin was sentenced on Monday to six-and-a-half years in prison for attempting to purchase sophisticated military weaponry for the Chinese government.
Ko-Suen "Bill" Moo, 59, was also fined US$1 million by US District Judge Donald Graham for his role in the scheme, which included an attempt to buy an engine for an F-16 fighter and AGM-129 cruise missiles from sellers who were actually undercover US agents. Moo and another man also sought to buy Blackhawk helicopter engines.
Moo, who was once Lockheed Martin's top agent in Taiwan, pleaded guilty in May to being a covert Chinese agent, conspiracy to broker and export US defense items and attempting to pay a US$500,000 bribe to win release from federal custody.
"I'm very sorry," Moo said through an interpreter at a sentencing hearing attended by seven family members.
Moo's attorney, Michael Tein, noted that Moo had no prior criminal record and that he made no profit from his efforts on China's behalf.
"He made a very serious mistake. It was atypical of his entire life," Tein said.
Moo, however, did admit attempting to acquire the military hardware for China along with a Frenchman who remains a fugitive beginning in 2004. They first sought to purchase the Blackhawk engines and then decided to focus instead on the F-16 engine.
In August last year, Moo met in Miami with individuals he thought were selling the engine but who were in fact undercover ICE agents. At that meeting, he showed them a document indicating that China also wanted the cruise missiles and AIM-120 air-to-air missiles. He was arrested when he went to inspect the engine.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
SANCTIONS: Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs Therese Kayikwamba Wagner called on the EU to tighten sanctions against Rwanda during an event in Brussels The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has accused the EU of “an obvious double standard” for maintaining a minerals deal with Rwanda to supply Europe’s high-tech industries when it deployed a far-wider sanctions regime in response to the war in Ukraine. Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs Therese Kayikwamba Wagner urged the EU to levy much stronger sanctions against Rwanda, which has fueled the conflict in the eastern DR Congo, describing the bloc’s response to breaches of the DR Congo’s territory as “very timid.” Referencing the EU’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she said: “It is an obvious double standard
RSS