Russian Nuclear Official Pleads Guilty
A Russian nuclear energy official pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering on Monday in connection with his role in arranging more than 2 million in corrupt payments to influence the awarding of contracts from the Russian-state owned nuclear energy company to businesses in the U.S.
Mikerin “admitted that the corrupt payments were made by conspirators to influence Mikerin and to secure improper business advantages for USA companies that did business with Tenex”, the department said in a statement.
The US Department of Justice says Mikerin colluded with Daren Condrey, co-president and managing partner at the Maryland-based firm Transport Logistics global (TLI), which had been contracted to transport uranium from Russian Federation to the USA for Tenex since 1996.
Mikerin was arrested on October 29, 2014, on a criminal complaint alleging money laundering and an elaborate extortion scheme.
Mikerin, with at least two others who pleaded guilty in June, conspired to transmit funds from Maryland and elsewhere in the United States to offshore shell company bank accounts located in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland.
As part of the scheme, the conspirators used code such as “lucky figure”, “LF”, and “cake” in an effort to disguise the transfer of corrupt payments.
According to FBI, Vadim Mikerin pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang of the District of Maryland on Monday while his sentencing is scheduled on December 8, 2015.
The total amount transferred from the USA to the bank accounts of offshore shell companies was US$ 2,126,622. He agreed to forfeit $2.1 million, as part of the plea agreement.
An attorney for Rosatom said earlier this year that the state-owned Russian firm cooperated with the US investigation, and that other officials with the company were not involved in the misconduct.
