Former U.S. Marine Corps pilot Daniel Edmund Duggan faces charges of plotting to illegally sell military services to China and violating arms export control laws, according to a recently unsealed 2017 indictment, Reuters reported.
Australian authorities arrested Duggan in October at the behest of the U.S. days after the United Kingdom opened an investigation into China’s apparent practice of recruiting former military pilots to provide training for Beijing’s armed forces, according to Reuters. Duggan had worked as an aviation consultant in Beijing for nearly eight years before moving to Australia just weeks before his arrest.
A Washington, District of Columbia court unsealed the indictment on Friday alongside Duggan’s arrest warrant, Reuters reported.
The Australian government holds Duggan in custody in Sydney pending extradition to the U.S. where he will answer for four charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by scheming to unlawfully export military services to China, money laundering and two counts of violating U.S. and international arms trade agreements, according to Reuters.
Duggan’s Australian lawyer, Dennis Miralis, has said that the former Marine has denounced his U.S. citizenship and denies the allegations of breaking the law, Reuters reported. “He denies having breached any U.S. law, any Australian law, any international law,” Miralis said in November.
