Industrial valve CEO sentenced to jail for selling to Iran

The head of a California manufacturing company was sentenced to thirteen months in prison and fined $300,000 for illegally selling industrial valves to Iran. David Meador, CEO of GWC Valve International Inc. pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and Iranian Transaction Regulations.

Mr Meador and others conspired between July 2005 and May 2008 to export valve related financial and technical services to Iran without first getting the required licenses and authorization from the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
US citizens have been forbidden from doing business with Iran since at least 1997.

GWC and Meador received orders from customers in Iran for industrial valves totaling more than $2.16 million, then entered into contracts with these customers and caused the valves to be manufactured. The defendants concealed that Iranian customers were the true recipients of the valves by falsely asserting that the GWC office in the United Arab Emirates was the end user of the goods and by altering or omitting references to the Iranian banks and end-users in correspondence about the sales.

GWC makes cast and forged steel valves for industries including power generation, petroleum, chemical and paper.