Treasurer of Charitable Organization Pleads Guilty to Making False Statements

ALEXANDRIA, VA—Sheikh Javed Rehmat, a pharmacist in Little Neck, New York, pleaded guilty today to one count of making false statements relating to a government investigation into violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and a conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Dana J. Boente, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; John P. Carlin, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Valerie Parlave, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Thomas J. Kelly, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Field Office in Washington, D.C., made the announcement after the plea was accepted by United States District Judge Liam O’Grady.

Rehmat faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison when he is sentenced on July 18, 2014.

In a statement of facts filed with the plea agreement, Rehmat, a treasurer and member of the Board of Directors of the Society for International Help (SIH), a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity based in New York, admitted to making false statements surrounding financial transactions concerning SIH, as well as another charity—the Kashmiri American Council (KAC). Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, the director of the KAC, was sentenced to serve two years in prison on March 30, 2012, for his role in a conspiracy to conceal that the KAC was funded between 1990 and 2011 with at least $3,500,000 from the government of Pakistan, including the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (Pakistan’s military intelligence service).

Rehmat also admitted to making false statements surrounding the purchase of over $8,000,000 of shares of stock from Yasin Kadi and/or Muwaffaq Limited—over $3,330,000 of which had been purchased with money that Rehmat had wired from SIH’s accounts to those of another charitable organization in Pakistan. Yasin Kadi has been designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, since 2001. Yasin Kadi held these shares through Muwaffaq Limited, which was registered in the Isle of Man.

This investigation is being conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the IRS Criminal Investigation’s Washington Field Office.

The prosecution is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg, Trial Attorney John Gibbs of the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Allison Ickovic from the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.justice.gov/usao/vae.