Artyom Uss, the son of the governor of Russia's Krasnoyarsk Krai region, has asked an Italian court to extradite him to Russia, not the United States, where he faces up to 30 years in prison on charges of sanctions evasion and money laundering.
Italian media reported on January 16 that Uss, who was arrested in October at the request of the United States, asked a court in Milan to hand him over to the Russian authorities. The court postponed the decision on extradition after lawyers defending Uss and others in the case requested information from U.S. officials regarding the exact charges against their clients and information about the conditions he will face in U.S. custody.
Shortly after he was detained in mid-October at Milan's Malpensa airport, a court in Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Uss, accusing him of money laundering. The move appeared aimed at heading off Uss's extradition to the United States.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said in October that another suspect in the case against Uss, Yury Orekhov, was arrested in Germany.
A 12-count indictment was unsealed on October 19 in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, charging the two men along with three other Russian nationals -- Svetlana Kuzurgasheva, Timofei Telegin, and Sergei Tulyakov. In addition, two Venezuelan nationals -- Juan Fernando Serrano Ponce and Juan Carlos Soto -- were charged with brokering illicit oil deals for a Venezuelan energy company.
According to the statement, Uss and Orekhov owned Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH (NDA GmbH) in Germany, which bought military technologies and dual-use technologies in the United States, including semiconductors and microchips that are used in military jets, missile systems, modern ammunition, radars, and satellites. Kuzurgasheva served as the company's executive director.
The items bought in the United States by the company in question were then passed on to Russian firms -- Radioavtomatika, Radioexport, and Abtronix -- owned by Telegin and Tulyakov.
The U.S. Attorney's Office says the items were discovered in Russian military vehicles and equipment captured by Ukrainian forces during Moscow's ongoing full-scale aggression against Ukraine.
According to the indictment papers, Uss and Orekhov also used NDA GmbH to illegally smuggle hundreds of millions of tons of oil from Venezuela to companies in China and Russia, including one that might be linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is under U.S. and EU sanctions over Russia's war in Ukraine.
Aleksandr Uss, Artyom's father, has served as the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Krai region since 2018.