5 Held in Cases Involving Shipping of Missile, Fighter Parts

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted four individuals and three corporations on charges of attempting to illegally export parts for fighter jets and missiles to China, authorities said Thursday.

Another person and a corporation were accused of trying to smuggle missile parts into the United States from Israel.

The indictments capped a five-year undercover investigation by the U.S. Customs Service, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mary Carter Andrues said all of the contraband parts were intercepted before they could reach their destinations. They included components for the F-4 Phantom and F-14 Tomcat jet fighters and for the Hawk, AIM-9 Sidewinder and TOW missiles.

Andrues declined to discuss how the defendants could have obtained the parts except to say, “They’re out there.”

In one indictment, Ahmad Nahardani, 55, of Encino and Gabriela De Brea, 62, of Alta Loma, along with their jointly owned companies, Mexpar International and Pasadena Aerospace in Azusa, were charged with violating the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms regulations.

Prosecutors said the two companies advertised themselves as “experts in exports” and provided prospective customers with lists of missile and aircraft parts for sale.

Nahardani and De Brea, who were arrested Thursday, allegedly sold the parts to an undercover government operative and tried to ship the items to China on eight separate occasions. They are being held pending a bail hearing.

In a separate case involving the same undercover operative, Maytone International of Thousand Oaks and company owners Jinghua Zhuang, 33, and Xiuwen Liang, 32, were accused of trying to ship parts for antitank missiles and jet fighters to China.

Zhuang and Liang, who are married, were arrested Wednesday on charges of violating the Arms Export Control Act. They are being held without bail.

In the third case, David Menashe, 52, of Tel Aviv and his company, Kam-Tech Systems Ltd., were charged with four counts of making false statements to the Customs Service.

Menashe was arrested in Los Angeles on Feb. 12 and has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He remains in custody.