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NRI sold stealth bomb tech, may lose home
Noshir Gowadia, held by FBI for selling B-2 stealth bomber secrets to foreign Govts, faces prospect of losing his $1.8 million mansion.
Noshir S Gowadia, the Indian American engineer arrested recently on charges of selling B-2 stealth bomber secrets to foreign governments, faces the prospect of losing his $1.8 million mansion in Hawaii.
The FBI has filed a forfeiture complaint to seize Gowadia's 6,790 sq feet home in Haiku, allegedly raised out of ill-gotten money funnelled from offshore bank accounts.
Submitting more incriminating details against the man who helped design the B-2's propulsion system, federal prosecutors said on Friday that proceeds from the sale of secrets were paid into corporations set up by Gowadia in foreign countries "for the purpose of laundering the monies".
One such corporation, NTech-E, is in Switzerland, while another, NTech-A, is based in Australia, the prosecutors told a US district court.
Gowadia, as reported last week, was arrested on October 26 for allegedly selling the "top secret" technology to three foreign governments, none of which has been identified by the FBI. He was suspected to be in liaison with five other governments as well.
The 61-year-old engineer, a naturalised American citizen born in Mumbai, marketed himself as the "father" of B-2's infrared suppressing propulsion system.
He was a design engineer with Northrop Grumman Corporation for 18 years and later a subcontractor at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico.
Gowadia, still being held without bail at the Federal Detention Centre in Honolulu, is alleged to have given a written statement to the FBI saying: "I knew it was wrong. I did it for the money."
But his son, Ashton Gowadia, insists that his father is innocent. Describing his father as an "American hero", Ashton said: "The man bleeds red, white and blue for this country and he has done a lot of things that have saved a lot of American military lives."
