Chinese National Sentenced to 3.5 Years for Trying to Export Military Boats, Engines to China

The U.S. Department of Justice is seen in Washington, on June 11, 2021. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

A Chinese national was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in federal prison on July 16 for attempting to illegally export maritime raiding craft and multi-fuel engines to China.

Ge Songtao, 51, of Nanjing, China, had pleaded guilty last year to a scheme to order seven rubber raiding boats that use engines that could operate using gasoline, diesel fuel or jet fuel. The U.S. military uses the special engines to launch the craft from submerged submarines or from aircraft into the ocean. China makes no comparable engine.

One of Ge’s U.S.-based employees misled a U.S. manufacturer of the engines by claiming they were destined for Hong Kong rather than Shanghai. The employee, Yang Yang, broke federal law by making a false entry about the destination of the engines in the Department of Commerce’s Automated Export System. Yang Yang pleaded guilty to the crime in September last year.

Ge wired $114,834 for the purchase of the engines to a company in Hong Kong, which in turn wired it to the U.S. manufacturer.

“He also coordinated plans to send an employee to Hong Kong to receive the raiding craft and engines and transship them to mainland China. The plot failed and authorities arrested Ge and his co-defendants before the raiding craft and engines were shipped overseas,” the Justice Department said in a press release on Friday.

Yang and another co-defendant, Zheng Yan, were both sentenced to time served for the crimes. The trial for the remaining co-defendant, Fan Yang, will start on Aug. 2.

Yang served 14 months in prison and Yan served the equivalent of six months in prison and 11 months in home detention.