US Charges Chinese Citizen with Providing Missile Materials to Iran

The United States says it has has charged a Chinese national with violating US sanctions by providing to Iran materials used to produce ballistic missiles.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said in a statement on May 16 that Xiangjiang Qiao, 39, faces charges including sanctions evasion, bank fraud and money laundering. He is in China and has not been arrested.

Between at least March 2019 and September 2022, Qiao helped supply the Islamic Republic with isostatic graphite, an ultra-fine grain used to make rocket nozzles, and set up a bank account in the name of a front company to receive $15,000 in transfers from a US bank in connection with the transactions, they said.

Qiao works at Sinotech Dalian Carbon and Graphite Manufacturing Corporation, a China-based company that the US Treasury Department placed on a sanctions list in 2014 for helping Tehran buy parts for its ballistic missile program. 

“The Iranian regime of terror and repression, and those who facilitate it, pose a grave threat to our national security," US Attorney Damian Williams said.  

The US authorities "will continue to work relentlessly to bring to justice those who advance the interests of the Iranian regime and thereby threaten the safety and security of the American people.”

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said the charges filed against Qiao "demonstrate the Justice Department’s commitment to preventing sensitive technology from falling into the hands of foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and Iran." 

"We will not tolerate those who would violate U.S. laws to allow authoritarian regimes and other hostile nations to use advanced technology to threaten U.S. national security and undermine democratic values around the world," he added.