Abilash Kurien, a former vice president of marketing, revenue management and network planning at Polar Air Cargo, was sentenced Tuesday to two years and eight months in prison for participating in a scheme that defrauded the company of $32 million in revenue.
Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York also sentenced Kurien, 46, to three years of supervised release and ordered him to forfeit $7.2 million and make restitution to Polar Air Cargo in the amount of $22.9 million.
Kurien previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
Polar Air Cargo is a joint venture between New York-based cargo airline Atlas Air and DHL Express. Atlas Air operates the aircraft. Most of the space is reserved for DHL, which determines the flight network. Atlas markets the rest of the capacity to freight forwarders. The airline has a fleet of eight large Boeing cargo jets, four 747-8s and four 777s.
For more than a decade ending in mid-2021, Kurien and three other senior executives at Polar Air Cargo accepted millions of dollars in kickbacks from at least 10 customers and vendors.
Kurien and three other company insiders accepted kickbacks from a small group of customers and vendors in exchange for favorable contracts, priority cargo loading, favorable shipping rates and enrollment in incentive programs, according to charging documents.
The Polar executives also allegedly concealed ownership positions in certain service providers and received ownership distributions based, in large part, on revenue derived from contracts with Polar — contracts that had been secured and, often, renewed largely based on the recommendations of the executives. The various limited liability companies they controlled collected about $23 million in kickback payments or disbursements.
Nine of the defendants charged in the case have pleaded guilty. Skye Xu, a supplier and the remaining defendant, is scheduled for trial on Oct. 28.
Last week, Carlton Llewellyn, who served as Polar’s vice president in charge of operations systems performance and quality, was sentenced to six months in prison. In late August, Robert Schirmer, who was senior director of customer service for the Americas at Polar, received an 18-month prison sentence and 200 hours of community service for participating in the fraud conspiracy.
In May, Lars Winkelbauer, who was Polar’s chief operating officer until July 2021 and characterized in charging documents as the ringleader of the conspiracy, was sentenced to four years in federal prison. He was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the United States for trial.
Patrick Lau, who headed forwarder Cargo on Demand, was previously sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.
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