ST. PAUL
Digi International confirmed Wednesday that it is the unnamed Minnesota company smugglers tricked into exporting 6,000 radio control devices to Iran, including 16 items that ended up in improvised explosive devices in Iraq.
The Minnetonka, Minn.-based company called the use of its equipment to make bombs "reprehensible."
The Justice Department on Tuesday said it had indicted five people and four overseas companies for the alleged plot, but it did not identify Digi because the company has not been charged. The indictment was filed in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15, 2010, but unsealed only Tuesday.
"We can confirm that the Minnesota company mentioned in the (Tuesday) Department of Justice press release...was Digi," company spokeswoman Jan McBride said in a statement Wednesday.
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"Digi was not a target in the government investigation," McBride said. "Digi finds the use of products for these purposes reprehensible."
According to the authorities, Digi was duped by the alleged smugglers into selling the radio modules for a phony telecommunications project in Singapore from 2007 to 2008.
"In each transaction, the defendants repeatedly and falsely represented to the Minnesota firm that Singapore was the final destination of the goods," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said, without naming Digi.
From 2008 through 2010, coalition forces found 16 of these modules in unexploded IEDs recovered in Iraq, the indictment said.
Shares of Digi fell 9.5 percent Wednesday
to $12.68. The company reported separately Wednesday that recent flooding in Thailand damaged a contract manufacturer it uses near Bangkok.
The Justice Department is awaiting the extradition of four Singapore citizens who were arrested Monday, Boyd said. The fifth defendant is a citizen and resident of Iran and remains at large, he said.
Distributed by MCT Information Services
