Back in the early days of this blog in 2007, we reported on the case of Robert Kraaipoel, a Dutch businessman who was indicted for selling U.S. origin items to Iran, even though Mr. Kraaipoel had never set foot in the United States and even though the sales were completely legal under Dutch law. We challenged the notion that under international law, the U.S. origin of the items was enough of a basis to assert criminal jurisdiction over Mr. Kraaipoel.

In 2009, we reported that Mr. Kraaipoel had voluntarily flown to the United States to face the music. We expressed some surprise that he had done this and expressed even more surprise that the court let him fly back to the Netherlands after a guilty plea. At the time we noted that this was likely because he had agreed to cooperate with the government in indicting other bigger fish.  Indeed, the sentencing memorandum filed by the U.S. Attorney in 2012 cited substantial and extensive cooperation by Mr. Kraaipoel dating back to 2007.  The court ultimately sentenced Mr. Kraaipoel to sixty months of probation and no prison time, no doubt because of Mr. Kraaipoel’s cooperation with U.S. authorities vis-à-vis his dealings with Iran.

Now it appears that one of the companies that got snared by Kraaipoel’s cooperation may have been the Dutch company Fokker Services BV, about which we reported last month.  Fokker agreed to pay $21 million to OFAC and to the DOJ under a deferred prosecution agreement.  Interestingly, Kraaipoel’s role in the Fokker case may derail the deferred prosecution agreement itself.

The federal court judge charged with approving the deferred prosecution agreement was concerned that the agreement for lenient treatment was premised on Fokker’s voluntary disclosure in 2010.  Because Kraaipoel began talking with prosecutors back in 2007, there was some concern, and some sources who told Bloomberg News, that the government knew about Fokker’s misconduct well before the voluntary disclosure, which would, of course, substantially detract from the credit that Fokker should receive for having voluntarily disclosed the matter.

A hearing on the deferred prosecution agreement to resolve these issues is scheduled for July 24.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) announced today that a $21 million fine had been extracted from the Dutch company Fokker Services BV in connection with its export of U.S. origin spare aircraft parts from the Netherlands to Iran and Sudan. The re-exports to Iran and Sudan by a Dutch company were prohibited under section 560.205 of the Iran regulations and section 538.507(b) of the Sudan regulations because the aircraft parts were presumably ECCN 9A991, although this fact is not expressly stated.

Half of the $21 million dollars is being paid in connection with a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. This is disturbing because the OFAC announcement makes clear that the exports were voluntarily disclosed by Fokker to OFAC. One of the major incentives for a voluntary disclosure is to avoid criminal prosecution. After the Fokker case, people are certainly going to think twice about making a voluntary disclosure.

Nothing in OFAC’s description of the reasons for the penalty justify turning a voluntary disclosure into a criminal prosecution. OFAC describes the violation as “wilful and reckless” because Fokker knew that these were U.S. origin parts. Note that there is no claim that Fokker knew that its export of these parts from the Netherlands to the embargoed countries was a violation of U.S. law, only that it knew that the parts were U.S. origin. Foreign persons might well not understand that exports of U.S. origin parts from their own country and in compliance with their own laws would be illegal, so OFAC is making an unjustifiable leap from knowledge of the parts’ origin to a “wilful and reckless” violation of law. Another aggravating factor was the absence of a U.S. sanctions compliance program at the Dutch company, again hardly a sound reason for turning a voluntary disclosure into a criminal prosecution.