An engineer of Indian origin has been arrested for sending blueprints of specialised valves, a critical part for nuclear plants, to a company's office knowing that they would be sent to North Korea.
In a complaint filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, a US district attorney said Sitaram Rai Mahadevan, 40, shipped the blueprints to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in New York, one of the contractors involved in the construction of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization's nuclear plant in Yongbyon in North Korea.
Mahadevan, who is a Canadian citizen with permanent residency status in the United States, was arrested on Friday.
He was subsequently released on a bail of $ 750,000 and could get up to ten years in prison and a fine of $ 250,000 if convicted.
Prosecution said that his application for license for export of similar valves along with documentation to India was rejected last year. The deal would have been worth $ 3.2 million if approved.
The criminal complaint said the blueprints could be used to produce valves that are critical in the operation of a nuclear plant.
Mahadevan had shipped the blueprints to Mitsubishi on October 17. But agents of the United States Commerce Department seized them before they could be sent out of the country.
The United States laws prohibit sending materials that could be used in nuclear plants to countries which have not ratified the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.
Such shipments to North Korea have been blocked since December 2002, when the North Koreans expelled inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency from its nuclear plants.