WASHINGTON: An Indian head of an international electronics company and a US firm has pleaded guilty to violating American laws on export of weapons technology and nuclear power testing equipment to India, according to the Justice Department.Parthasarathy Sudarshan (47), CEO of Cirrus Electronics, entered his guilty plea in US District Court in Columbia to the felony charge of conspiracy to violate various laws, including Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

A resident of South Carolina, Sudarshan supplied microprocessors and other electronic components to Indian agencies, including the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and Bharat Dynamics Ltd. (BDL), which is involved in development and production of ballistic missiles, between 2002 and 2006, the US Department of Justice claimed.

"Both VSSC and BDL are on the Department of Commerce's Entity List and exports of US-origin commodities to these entities are restricted and require prior authorization in the form of a license from the Department of Commerce," the Department said.Sentencing is scheduled for June 16.

Sudarshan faces a maximum punishment of five years in prison, a USD 250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.In the second case, a Minnesota company, MTS Systems Corporation, was sentenced to two years' probation and fined USD 400,000 after it pleaded guilty to repeatedly falsifying documents so that it could illegally export equipment for use in India's nuclear program.

The ruling on the MTS Systems Corporation brought to an end a nearly seven-year legal row that involved a number of US government agencies including the Department of Commerce. In Sudarshan's case, the court documents accuse him and others at Cirrus of providing the US companies with fraudulent certificates that claimed that the end-users of the electrical components were non-restricted entities in India, when, in fact, the items were for VSSC. Cirrus has offices in Simpsonville, South Carolina, Singapore and Bangalore.

"There were no export licenses for any of the shipments to VSSC and BDL. To further conceal from the US government that goods were going to entities in India on the Department of Commerce Entity List, Sudarshan would route the products through its (the company's) Singapore office and then send the packages on to India," the Justice Department claimed.In addition to supplying VSSC and BDL with components, it alleged that Sudarshan acquired microprocessors for the Tejas, a fighter jet under development in India.

The microprocessors were necessary for the navigation and weapons systems of the Tejas, it claimed "Because the microprocessors are on the US Munitions List, the State Department must license any export of the products. On two occasions in 2004 and 2006, Cirrus caused the shipment of a total of 500 microprocessors to the Aeronautical Development Establishment.... There were no licenses for these shipments," the Justice Department said.