US BUSTS NETWORK PROVIDING TECHNOLOGY TO RUSSIAN MILITARY

The Biden administration announced a round of criminal charges and sanctions related to a complicated scheme to procure military technologies from U.S. manufacturers and illegally supply them to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

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Some of the equipment was recovered on battlefields in Ukraine, the Justice Department said, and other nuclear proliferation technology was intercepted in Latvia before it could be shipped to Russia.

The Justice Department charged nearly a dozen people in separate cases in New York and Connecticut, including Russian nationals accused of purchasing sensitive military technologies from U.S. companies and laundering tens of millions of dollars for wealthy Russian businessmen; Latvians accused of conspiring to smuggle equipment to Russian and oil brokers for Venezuela accused of working on illicit deals for a Venezuelan state-owned oil company.

“As I have said, our investigators and prosecutors will be relentless in their efforts to identify, locate, and bring to justice those whose illegal acts undermine the rule of law and enable the Russian regime to continue its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

Five of the defendants charged in New York are Russian nationals, and two have been arrested. Two others are oil brokers for Venezuela.