nuclear-news

Guilty plea from Russian official in USA graft case

Russian official to plead guilty in US court over graft in cooperative nuclear weapons destruction program, Bellona, August 20, 2015 by Charles Digges  charles@bellona.no

Vadim Mikerin, a former executive with the Russian state nuclear fuel conglomerate Tenex has agreed to plead guilty in the US to money laundering and bribery charges in connection to a cooperative disarmament deal between Washington and Moscow, The Wall Street Journal reported………

Mikerin is the second major Russian nuclear official in a decade to be felled for defrauding a cooperative US-Russian nuclear program. The first was Yevgeny Adamov, former chief of Minatom, Rosatom’s predecessor.

Three US nationals, Daren and Carol Condrey, and Boris Rubizhevsky, were also charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with the case, various public documents from the US Attorney General’s office in Maryland show.

Mikerin was initially arrested on October 29, 2014 on charges of accepting kickbacks from uranium deals between Russia and the United States under the expired Megatons to Megawatts cooperative disarmament program.

He was denied bail and has remained in jail in Washington, D.C. since his arrest, the Russian Legal Information Agency Rapsi reported.

The disarmament program

Between 1993 and 2013, Russia down blended 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium for sale to and use in US commercial reactors under the HEU-LEU, or Megatons to Megawatts program……….http://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2015-08-russian-official-plead-guilty-us-court-graft-cooperative-nuclear-weapons-destruction-program

August 24, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, USA