Monday, August 16, 2010

Chemical Engineer Faces 25 Years for Illegally Aiding Iran

Mahmoud Reza Banki GS '05 completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, but perhaps an Operations Research and Financial Engineering degree would have been a better choice. He was convicted in June for violating the trade embargo with Iran and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Though we'd all like to believe an ORFE degree would have helped him stay out of this corner in the first place, he now faces 25 years in prison depending on the decision of a New York federal judge.

To Banki's credit (that is, $3.4 million worth of credit siphoned off to Iran), he was unaware of the activity of his informal banking system.

2 comments:

guest said...

The author of this article does not know the case. The 3.4$ million was transferred to the US from Iran, not the other way around, and belonged to Dr. Banki's family.

Anonymous said...

This post was incredibly poorly thought out. The whole premise behind the case against Banki is a hawala system of money transfer, wherein no money crosses international lines. Moreover, the undisputed facts of the case establish that $3.4M went OUT of Iran and only around $4k went into Iran. So $3.4M was not “siphoned off to Iran.” Either the writer is apparently unable to distinguish between the Government’s pleadings and the actual findings of the court, or he simply read another’s story covering the case out of context and did not bother to do his own research. The writer is better served becoming informed about his topic rather than trying (and failing) to demonstrate his wit. It’s ironic because the writer attacks Banki’s intelligence but demonstrates himself the fool. Pretty sad for Princeton.