Fresh off of renewed questions about a grant given to a health organization that worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the National Institutes of Health is in the spotlight for giving grants to a man charged with illegally supplying high-tech medical equipment to Iran.
According to a Justice Department news release, Dr. Mohammad Faghihi was charged Tuesday with conspiracy to commit money laundering, unlawful exports of goods to Iran, smuggling goods out of and into the U.S., wire fraud and making false statements.
Faghihi, a former associate professor at the University of Miami who was born in Iran, was charged in a Miami federal court alongside his wife and sister.
The three operated a company called Express Gene, which, for four years ending in November of 2020, "received numerous wire transfers from accounts in Malaysia, the People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, totaling almost $3.5 million," the news release said.
"Those third-country international wires [are] indicative of money laundering designed to conceal that payment originated in Iran," the federal complaint said, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
The Department of Justice alleged in the news release that "some of the money received was used by Express Gene and its principals to purchase genetic sequencing equipment from U.S. manufacturers and ship them to Iran without a license from the Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to export the machines, despite sanctions on Iran."
The Miami Herald reported that prosecutors told a judge that one of Express Gene's clients was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an Iranian military branch that's also designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.