Italy, at the request of the US, has arrested the son of a senior Russian official at Milan Malpensa airport, implicated in a case of the illegal sale of American technologies to arms companies in Russia. In a statement, the Russian embassy in Italy confirmed that Artiom Ussson of the governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, Aleksander Uss, was arrested on Monday. Uss is locked up in the prison of Busto Arsizio, the one closest to Malpensa. He reports it to breaking latest news the lawyer Vinicio Nardo with whom Uss spoke briefly this afternoon. As it turns out, Uss was in Italy where he has business and would not have been aware of the accusations made against him. He was boarding a flight to Istanbul, Turkey.
The day before, American justice had announced the indictment of a dozen people accused of selling American technologies to Russia, some of which – according to Washington – are used in the conflict in Ukraine. “On 17 October this year at Milan Malpensa airport, at the request of the American side, the citizen of the Russian Federation Artem Uss was arrested”. This was confirmed by the Russian embassy in Italy with a post on Facebook, specifying that “within 45 days the United States is required to provide the Italian court with the file with the formulation of the charge, which must be examined within 6 months”. The man, the statement continues, “has not expressed any complaints about the conditions of detention”.
According to the embassy “the consulate general of the Russian Federation in Milan has already held two meetings with Artiom Uss, maintains constant contact with his Italian lawyer and intends to continue to monitor this situation closely”. Artiom Uss is accused, along with four other Russians and two Venezuelan oil brokers, of having purchased electronic components from the United States intended to equip aircraft, radars or missiles, and of having resold them to Russian companies, evading the sanctions in force. This network is suspected to have used the same front company to transfer hundreds of millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil to Russia and China. Another Russian suspect in this case, Yuri Urekhov, was arrested Monday in Germany, according to Washington. The US Department of Justice said it would ask for the two men to be extradited to the United States.
“The political nature of these accusations is obvious,” the US governor denounced on Telegram, in reaction to his son’s arrest. This arrest comes as Moscow and Washington are currently conducting prisoner exchange negotiations, including the American basketball player Brittney Grinersentenced in Russia to nine years in prison for drug trafficking.
Artiom Uss, son of the Russian governor, arrested: he risks up to 30 years
On the indictment with 12 counts, Russians Yury Orekhov, Artem Uss, Svetlana Kuzurgasheva, Timofey Telegin and Sergey Tulyakov, and Venezuelan oil traders Juan Fernando Serrano Ponce and Juan Carlos Soto were charged. As reported by Tass. According to US investigators, the defendants are involved in “orchestrating a complex system to illegally obtain US military technology and Venezuela sanctioned oil”. According to the US Department of Justice, Orekhov and Uss were arrested in Germany and Italy respectively on 17 October and will undergo extradition procedure. If convicted, the defendants face a maximum of 30 years in prison.
The US administration has expanded the list of anti-Russian sanctions, adding a Russian citizen and two affiliated companies based in Germany and the UAE, the US Treasury Department said. “Today, in coordination with the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated a Russian network that procured military technology. and sensitive to dual use from US manufacturers and supplied them to Russian end users, “he said. The designated persons today are Russian citizen Yury Orekhov and two of his companies, Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH (NDA GmbH) and Opus Energy Trading LLC (Opus Energy Trading).