DOJ announces two indictments for attempts to transfer US technology to Russia – HotAir

Last month Politico Europe released a story reporting that Russia had utilized up a great deal of its stockpile of substantial-tech ordnance and was obtaining trouble changing it. That’s mainly because much of the tech used in modern-day Russian weaponry is dependent on chips and parts that come from the US. So very long as sanctions are in position, that places Russia in a hard place.

Kyiv is acutely knowledgeable that the result of the war is likely to hinge on regardless of whether Russia finds a way to get back entry to large-tech chips, and is out to make certain it does not get them. In buy to flag the hazard, Ukraine is sending out worldwide warnings that the Kremlin has drawn up browsing lists of semiconductors, transformers, connectors, casings, transistors, insulators and other parts, most made by businesses in the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K., Taiwan and Japan, among other people, which it requirements to gas its war effort…

Ukrainian Key Minister Denys Shmyhal stressed the war experienced appear to an inflection level in which the technological edge was proving decisive.

“According to our facts, Russians have currently invested nearly 50 % … of their weaponry arsenal,” he explained to POLITICO.

Today, the DOJ announced prices in two different situations that require endeavours to evade sanctions and supply US tech to Russia. The first scheme associated both Venezuelan oil and US navy tech.

A 12-count indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn, New York charging 5 Russian nationals, Yury Orekhov, Artem Uss, Svetlana Kuzurgasheva, also regarded as “Lana Neumann,” Timofey Telegin and Sergey Tulyakov with numerous charges linked to a worldwide procurement, smuggling and cash laundering network…

As alleged, Orekov has served as the element owner, Chief Executive Officer and Running Director of Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH (NDA GmbH), a privately held industrial gear and commodity buying and selling firm situated in Hamburg, Germany.  The other owner of NDA GmbH is Artem Uss, the son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Krai region.  Kuzurgasheva served as the Main Executive Officer of one particular of the scheme’s shell firms and labored for NDA GmbH underneath Orekhov.  Employing NDA GmbH as a entrance company, Orekhov and Kuzurgasheva sourced and acquired delicate army and twin-use technologies from U.S. producers, together with innovative semiconductors and microprocessors utilised in fighter aircraft, missile devices, intelligent munitions, radar, satellites and other area-dependent armed forces applications.  These goods have been shipped to Russian conclusion buyers, like sanctioned firms managed by Telegin and Tulyakov, this kind of as Radioavtomatika, Radioexport and Abtronics, that serviced Russia’s defense sector.  Some of the similar electronic factors attained through the criminal plan have been uncovered in Russian weapons platforms seized on the battlefield in Ukraine.

In 2019, Orekhov travelled to the United States to source sections used in the Russian-made Sukhoi fighter plane and the American-designed F-22 Raptor stealth fighter aircraft.  Orekhov and Uss also made use of NDA GmbH as a front to smuggle hundreds of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Venezuela to Russian and Chinese purchasers, such as a Russian aluminum organization controlled by a sanctioned oligarch and the world’s most significant oil refining, gas and petrochemical conglomerate based mostly in Beijing, People’s Republic of China.  Serrano Ponce and Soto brokered bargains value thousands and thousands of dollars involving PDVSA and NDA GmbH, which ended up routed as a result of a complicated group of shell providers and financial institution accounts to disguise the transactions.  In 1 interaction with Serrano Ponce, Orekhov openly admitted that he was performing on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, expressing “He [the oligarch] is less than sanctions as properly.  Which is why we [are] performing from this firm [NDA GmbH].  As fronting.”  The scheme also included falsified shipping documents and supertankers that deactivated their GPS navigation methods to obscure the Venezuelan origin of their oil.

The other scenario introduced today included an endeavor by Latvians to purchase a “jig grinder” to Russia, which is prohibited as it is a equipment utilised in the nuclear protection marketplace:

In accordance to court docket files, starting in 2018, Eriks Mamonovs, 33, and Vadims Ananics, 46, both equally citizens of Latvia who operated CNC Weld, a Latvia-centered company, conspired with Stanislav Romanyuk, 37, a citizen of Ukraine and resident of Estonia who operated Estonia-based mostly BY Trade OU, and other folks, including Janis Uzbalis, 46, of Latvia and persons in Russia and a Russia-centered firm, to violate U.S. export guidelines and laws and smuggle a jig grinder that was manufactured in Connecticut to Russia…

A jig grinder is a superior-precision grinding equipment technique that does not involve a license to export to European Union nations around the world but does call for a license for export and reexport to Russia mainly because of its purposes in nuclear proliferation and protection plans. At no time did the defendants use for, get or possess a license of authorization from the U.S. Section of Commerce to export or reexport the jig grinder to Russia, as expected by the Export Regulate Reform Act of 2018 and the Export Administration Rules (EAR), which limit the export of goods that could make a sizeable contribution to the navy prospective of other nations or that could be detrimental to the overseas plan or nationwide protection of the United States.

U.S. authorities, doing work with Latvian authorities, intercepted the jig grinder in Riga, Latvia, in advance of it was to be transported to Russia…

Ananics, Mamonovs and Uzbalis have been arrested on Oct. 18 in Riga, Latvia at the request of the United States. Romanyuk was arrested in Tallinn, Estonia at the ask for of the United States, on June 13, 2022. The Justice Office is searching for their extradition.

The DOJ press release does not specify which firm they tried to get this from but this appears to be the type of machine they are conversing about. It looks like it’s fundamentally a large precision CNC equipment.

In both of those instances you get the feeling that Russia is receiving determined immediately after getting been reduce off from buying superior tech equipment it just can’t manufacture on its own.