A 10 count indictment was unsealed today charging Sihai Cheng, a/k/a Chun Hai Cheng, a/k/a Alex Cheng, and Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, along with two Iranian companies, Nicaro Eng. Co., Ltd. (Nicaro) and Eyvaz Technic Manufacturing Company (Eyvaz), with conspiring to export American-made pressure transducers to Iran. Pressure transducers can be used in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium and produce weapons-grade uranium.

On Feb. 7, 2014, Cheng, a citizen of the People's Republic of China, was arrested by British authorities on a United States provisional arrest warrant during a trip to the United Kingdom. He is being detained in England pending his extradition to the United States. At a hearing held today in the United Kingdom, Cheng was again remanded in custody and the extradition hearing was set for June 5, 2014.

The indictment alleges that between in or about November 2005 and 2012, Cheng supplied thousands of parts that have nuclear applications, including U.S. origin goods, to Eyvaz, an Iranian company involved in the development and procurement of parts for Iran's nuclear weapons program. In 2011, the Council of the European Union designated Eyvaz as an entity "involved in [Iran's] nuclear or ballistic missile activities" and imposed restrictive measures against it. In so doing, it found that Eyvaz had produced vacuum equipment, which it supplied to two of Iran's uranium nuclear enrichment facilities, Natanz and Fordow, and that it also had supplied pressure transducers to Kalaye Electric Company, an Iranian company which has been designated by the United States and United Nations as a proliferator of Weapons of Mass Destruction.