NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Seven men were charged in a Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday for allegedly circumventing U.S. arms sanctions against Russia.
Two of the men are U.S. citizens — one from New Jersey and the other from New Hampshire. The other five men are Russian nationals.
Prosecutors suspect one of the Russian defendants, Vadim Konoshchenok, is an FSB agent. The FSB, or Federal Security Service, is a Russian intelligence agency comparable to the CIA in the U.S.
Konoshchenok was arrested in Estonia on Dec. 6 after law enforcement raided a warehouse in which officers found 375 pounds of U.S.-origin ammunition. He’ll face an extradition trial in Estonia before facing trial for conspiracy and related charges in the U.S.
Alexey Brayman of New Hampshire and Vadim Yermolenko of New Jersey, were also arrested.
The other four defendants, Yevgeniy Grinin, Aleksey Ippolitov, Boris Livshits and Svetlana Skvortsova, remain at-large.
The U.S. accused all seven defendants of running a “global procurement and money laundering network on behalf of the Russian government.”
Several of the defendants and companies they controlled were subjected to U.S. sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The Department of Justice and our international partners will not tolerate criminal schemes to bolster the Russian military’s war efforts,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. “With three of the defendants now in custody, we have disrupted the procurement network allegedly used by the defendants and Russian intelligence services to smuggle sniper rifle ammunition and sensitive electronic components into Russia.”
If convicted, the defendants each face up to 30 years in prison.
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