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Arms
sale suspect disappears from Singapore home
AFP
04
Feb
08
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2008/02/04/2003400199
At
an upmarket residential development in a leafy Singapore
neighborhood, there is little sign of a couple indicted by US
justice authorities over the illegal sale of aircraft parts to
Iran.
British-born Brian Woodford has not been seen at his
home in the city-state for a year or more, his housesitter said
on the telephone yesterday.
"He is not here. He don't
live here anymore," said a woman with a Filipino accent who
answered the phone at his Singapore home.
She said
Woodford had not been there since last year or two years
ago.
Woodford runs the Singapore-based Monarch Aviation
Pte with his wife, Laura Wang-Woodford. In January 2003, a New
York grand jury returned a 20-count indictment against the couple
that was under seal until late last year, according to the US
network ABC News, which broke the story on
Thursday.
Wang-Woodford, a Singaporean resident and US
citizen, was arraigned on Friday in a New York court on the
indictment, the US Department of Justice said.
A director
of the lucrative Singapore-based import-export business, she was
arrested in December as she entered the US, the justice
department said.
Monarch Aviation allegedly exported
military aircraft parts from US suppliers to Singapore without
proper licenses.
It also allegedly resold commercial
aircraft parts illegally to a firm in Tehran, in violation of a
US law barring certain transactions of that kind.
Wang-Woodford
pleaded not guilty at her arraignment on Friday and was ordered
to be held without bail. She left Singapore on Dec. 18 and spent
five days in China before traveling to the US, the justice
department said.
At the Singapore condominium, a wooden
crucifix hangs on the double front doors and a plaque beside them
reads, "Brian and Laura Woodford."
The
ground-floor unit opens onto an outdoor patio where a
glass-topped dining table sits ready with candles on it. A bush
beside the doors is decorated with Chinese ornaments.
The
middle-aged house-sitter said she did not know how to contact
Brian Woodford or where he had gone.
Monarch has been in
business in Singapore for more than 15 years and "is known
to have exported goods worth millions of dollars," said a
letter submitted by US attorneys to the presiding US District
Court judge.
The company's office is listed as on the 25th
floor of an office block in the heart of Singapore's prime
Orchard Road district, but it now appears abandoned.
At
the time of her arrest, Wang-Woodford was carrying merchandise
catalogs from a Chinese company that is listed as a proliferator
of weapons of mass destruction by the US Treasury Department, the
US indictment said.
Items advertised in the catalogs
included surface-to-air missile systems and rocket launchers, the
indictment said.
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