NEW YORK (AP) — Federal authorities in New York have charged a Chinese national with trying to buy a restricted high-tech material for the test flight of a new fighter jet in China.
Ming Suan Zhang briefly appeared afternoon in federal court in Brooklyn Wednesday. A magistrate jailed him without bail. Afterward, a court-appointed defense attorney says the government had asked him not to disclose the circumstances of his client’s arrest, calling it a “somewhat sensitive matter.”
The charges against him stem from an undercover investigation of the black market for carbon fiber used for military and nuclear purposes.
Prosecutors accuse the 40-year-old Zhang of trying to broker a deal to purchase millions of dollars in carbon fiber without a license. They say he told an undercover agent it was needed next month.
