Italy froze the financial assets of Artem Uss, a politically connected Russian who escaped from house arrest in Milan while awaiting extradition on US charges of sanctions evasion and money laundering.
(Bloomberg) — Italy froze the financial assets of Artem Uss, a politically connected Russian who escaped from house arrest in Milan while awaiting extradition on US charges of sanctions evasion and money laundering.
The Finance Ministry in Rome late Friday approved a decree freezing the assets, which include a stake in a company, a villa and a bank account.
The US Justice Department alleges Uss was part of a network that illegally imported US technology to support President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. They used the same front company in Hamburg, Germany, to smuggle hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from Venezuela to Russian and Chinese purchasers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a summary of the charges on Oct. 19.
Uss is the son of the governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk. He escaped after breaking his electronic bracelet the day after a court in Milan cleared his extradition to the US.Â
Uss was arrested in Milan in October on charges that he and his associates had defrauded the US and violated sanctions by buying sensitive US technologies as well as sanctioned Venezuelan oil. He denied any wrongdoing and his father, Alexander, governor of the Krasnoyarsk region, denounced the accusations as politically motivated.
Alexander Uss gave up his governor’s post after his son’s escape.
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