US sentences ex Russian nuke official to 4 yrs for bribes

Washington: A former top nuclear official of Russia’s state-owned enterprise Rosatom has been sentenced to four years in prison and fined in the US for accepting USD two million bribes for awarding contracts to American companies.

Vadim Mikerin, 56, former president of a US-based Rosatom subsidiary, pleaded guilty in August to a money laundering conspiracy. He was also ordered to forfeit USD 2.1 million by District Judge Theodore D Chuang of the District of Maryland.

According to court documents, Mikerin was the director of the Pan American Department of JSC Techsnabexport (TENEX), a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation and the sole supplier and exporter of Russian Federation uranium and uranium enrichment services to nuclear power companies worldwide, and the president of TENAM Corporation, a wholly- owned subsidiary and the official representative of TENEX.

Between 2004 and October 2014, conspirators agreed to make corrupt payments to influence Mikerin and to secure improper business advantages for US companies that did business with TENEX, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), court documents showed.

Mikerin admitted that he conspired with Daren Condrey, Boris Rubizhevsky and others to transmit approximately USD 2,126,622 from Maryland and elsewhere in the US to offshore shell company bank accounts located in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland with the intent to promote the FCPA violations.

He further admitted that the conspirators used consulting agreements and code words to disguise the corrupt payments.

Condrey, 50, pleaded guilty on June 17 to conspiracy to violate the FCPA and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Rubizhevsky, 64, pleaded guilty on June 15 to conspiracy to commit money laundering. Condrey and Rubizhevsky await sentencing.