A businessman from Iowa, United States was convicted on Monday of wrongly claiming that the beef exported to Malaysia and Indonesia by his company was ‘halal’.
Bill Aossey Jr. the founder of the Midamar Corporation, a Cedar Rapids-based company that is considered a pioneer in the sale of halal meat and food products, was convicted by a federal jury on charges of conspiracy, making false statements on export certificates and wire fraud, according to the Associated Press.
The 73-year-old is also a longtime leader in the city’s relatively large Muslim community.
Aossey was held in federal custody after the verdict, and may face five or more years in prison.
Prosecutors disclosed that the 73-year-old told his employees to lie about the origin of their products so that they could export them to Malaysia and Indonesia from 2007 to 2010.
Both the countries have very strict slaughter standards and they limit imports to only those slaughterhouses which are certified as providers of halal meat.
The products that were being sent to the two countries came from a Minnesota slaughterhouse, PM beef, which was not approved by them.
Aossey told his employees to remove the PM beef tags from the meat and replace them with J F O’Neill Packing Co, which a certified slaughterhouse for halal meat.
