Chinese businessman accused of using New York banks to buy Iran materials to make nuclear weapons

The 118-count indictment against Li Fang Wei and his company, LIMMT, accuses them of falsifying business records and of conspiracy to gain access to American banks.

They are also accused of selling various materials to the Defence Industries Organisation, part of the Iranian military, which are banned by the United Nations from being sold to Iran.

These included thousands of pounds of a special aluminium alloy used almost exclusively for long-range missiles production and tantalum, a mineral used in armour-piercing projectiles.

Prosecutors said Mr Li and his company were identified years ago as fronts for Iran's illegal nuclear programme.

Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan's district attorney, said one goal of the investigation was to make the public and the federal government aware that Iran is "deadly serious" about developing nuclear weapons technology.

He said that Mr Li is in China and he will ask the government there to extradite him to the US.

Prosecutors also said that LIMMT and Iran were in talks to have the company send 400 gyroscopes and 600 accelerometers ?again, crucial technology for developing long range missiles.

Mr Li and LIMMT are banned from doing business in the US but allegedly hide their activities by using shell companies and bank accounts with aliases to transfer money for dozens of Iranian transactions from November 2006 to September 2008.

The payments for the transactions were sent to and from Chinese banks that handled accounts for Mr Li. However, because 70 per cent of the world's business is done in dollars, US banks had to be used to process transactions, said prosecutors.

Mr Morgenthau said he is convinced that the American banks were completely deceived and had no part in helping Mr Li carry out the illicit transactions.

In January, Lloyds TSB agreed in New York to pay ?31 million to the US government for helping customers get around US sanctions on dealing with Libya, Sudan and Iran.

The British bank, which admitted responsibility for criminal conduct, was accused of falsifying wire transfers, removing customer information so that their links with the three countries would not be detected by US banks.

Copyright and Exemption Declaration :¢ÙAll articles, pictures and videos that are marked with "China Aluminum Network" on this website are copyright and belong to China Aluminium Network (www.alu.com.cn). When transshipment, any media, website or individual must list the source from "China Aluminium Network (www.alu.com.cn)". We seek legal actions against anyone that disobey this. ¢ÚArticles that marked as copy from others are for transferring more information to readers, do not represent or endorse their opinions or accuracy and reliability. When other media, website or individuals copy from our website, must keep the source. Anyone that changes the articles' sources will hold the responsibilities for copyright and law problems. We also seek legal actions against anyone that disobey this. ¢ÛIf any articles copied by our website concern the copyright and other problems, please contact us within one week.