A court of appeals in the Italian city of Milan has approved a motion to extradite Artyom Uss, the son of the governor of Russia's Krasnoyarsk region, to the United States, where he may face up to 30 years in prison on charges of sanctions evasion and money laundering.
The La Repubblica newspaper reported on March 21 that the 41-year-old Uss had been placed under house arrest near Milan.
Uss was arrested in October at the request of the United States. Shortly after he was detained 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 his extradition to the United States.
Uss asked to be handed over to the Russian authorities in January.
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), which bought U.S. military technologies and dual-use technologies, 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 companies -- Radioavtomatika, Radioexport, and Abtronix -- owned by Telegin and Tulyakov.
The U.S. Attorney General's Office said the items were discovered in Russian military vehicles and in equipment captured by Ukrainian forces during Russia'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 European Union sanctions over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Aleksandr Uss, Artyom's father, has served as the governor of Krasnoyarsk since 2018.