A former managing director of a Shanghai subsidiary of PPG Industries Inc. has been charged with conspiring to sell epoxy coatings to Pakistan for a nuclear reactor.
Xun Wang, 51, was arrested June 16 by Atlanta police before she could board an international flight to Italy, according to court documents. She had an initial appearance on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The coatings she's accused of helping export are specifically designed for use in nuclear reactors. The Department of Commerce denied an export license for the coatings in June 2006 because Pakistan refuses to sign the international nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
Wang is charged with being the ringleader of a group of PPG employees who, after the license was denied, shipped hundreds of gallons of the coatings to a location in China to disguise the fact that the coatings were ending up at a nuclear power plant near Chasma, Punjab.
PPG Industries, Downtown, and PPG Paints Trading Co., the Shanghai subsidiary, pleaded guilty in December to the illegal sales and agreed to pay $3.75 million in fines. As part of the plea, PPG Paints agreed to also forfeit $32,000 in profits and spend five years on corporate probation.
