A “surgical operation” carried out with a network of accomplices who probably helped him escape abroad. It is against this scenario that the Milan prosecutor’s office is investigating to reconstruct the escape and try to trace Artem Uss, the Russian entrepreneur and son of the governor of a Siberian region who was blocked at Malpensa on October 17, on an arrest warrant of the judicial authority of New York, and against whom, three days ago, the Court of Appeal of Milan had granted extradition to the United States. An investigation that starts from the reconstruction of what happened on Wednesday.
Artem Uss, the escape from Basiglio’s house
On Wednesday, the entrepreneur left the house in Basiglio, in the Milan area (which he apparently bought only a few months earlier), getting into a car driven by another man and after having tampered with the electronic bracelet. One of the hypotheses under consideration is that he may have taken a flight from a private airport, also using false documents. A plan, apparently, organized for days, so much so that his wife, who had been living with him in Basiglio since early December (when he ended up under house arrest after prison), had already returned to Russia on 13 March.
The Russian businessman arrested in Malpensa points to house arrest: “I don’t want to be extradited to the USA”
by the Milan editorial staff
Russian entrepreneur escaped, wife’s movements
After his wife had returned to Russia about ten days ago, other people, as far as we know, had been authorized to bring food and other basic necessities to the house in Basiglio of Uss, a businessman in the oil sector who he would have had particular and deep-rooted interests in Italy. The cameras, analyzed by the investigators, film a car driven by an accomplice who takes the 40-year-old away in the early afternoon of Wednesday. The machine would be registered to a person on whom checks are underway, but it would also have been in use in the last period by several people. The electronic bracelet system was tampered with (hence the alarm that went off at 2 pm on Wednesday), but the same bracelet in the house was not found. With the execution of the arrest warrant in recent months, the American authorities had also requested and obtained from the Milan prosecutor’s office the seizure of the entrepreneur’s mobile phone and credit cards.
Artem Uss, where the escaped entrepreneur may have gone
The most probable hypothesis, according to investigative sources, is that Uss has already left Italy using false documents and perhaps also using a private flight. Before being blocked at Malpensa on October 17, he was about to board a plane to Turkey. In the context of these delicate investigations, state investigators cannot rule out alleged support also from the Russian secret services. Meanwhile, searches for the entrepreneur, through Interpol, are also underway abroad.
The carabinieri are investigating the case, coordinated by the prosecutor Giovanni Tarzia and by the prosecutor Marcello Viola himself, and for now the priority remains that of arresting the escaped prisoner, even if there will then be a whole series of shadows that lengthen the story to clarify. The Milan prosecutor’s office is in contact with the American authorities who, from what has been known, have expressed their concern about how this escape occurred.