An Indictment against Two Russian Military Officers in the Leviev-Zlatev Trade with the Ukraine Task Force KleptoCapture
EUREKA, Mo. — After falling out with his partner at a limousine company in the St. Louis suburbs, Martin Zlatev recently sought a lucrative new business opportunity: selling $30 million worth of rockets, grenade launchers and ammunition to the Ukrainian military.
The pair recently wrote to the Ukraine Ministry of Defense, saying that time is of the essence. They outlined a plan for Ukraine to get American, European and Bosnian arms.
Since the Russian invasion in February, the Biden administration fast-tracked hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of private arms sales to the Ukraine, cutting the approval process in half. In just the first four months of 2015, the State Department authorized more than $300 million in private deals to Ukraine, government documents show. The department allowed less than fifteen million dollars of sales to Ukraine in the entire fiscal year.
The Justice Department announced charges on Wednesday against nearly a dozen people and two companies in connection with illegal schemes to send military technology to Russia, some of which has allegedly been recovered from battlefields in Ukraine.
Starting in at least 2017, the indictment says, the defendants used a global network of shell companies and bank accounts to acquire and ship advanced electronics and equipment to Russia that can be used for “quantum computing, hypersonic and nuclear weapons development and other military and space-based military applications.”
“As I have said, our investigators and prosecutors will be relentless in their efforts to identify, locate, and bring to justice those whose illegal acts undermine the rule of law and enable the Russian regime to continue its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” Garland said.
The indictments are the most recent action law enforcement has taken with the help of the department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, which was announced earlier this year and part of an effort to enforce sanctions against Russian government officials and oligarchs.
One indictment, filed in New York, accuses five Russian nationals and two oil brokers for Venezuela of setting up a network of shell companies to illegally send US military technology to Russia and millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil to Russian and Chinese buyers, avoiding US sanctions.
The illicit activities continued after the United States imposed sanctions against Serniya, Sertal and one of the defendants, Yevgeniy Grinin, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, according to the Justice Department.
To complete the transactions, the defendants manipulated shipping documents and created fake company names to use in bank accounts where they spent tens of millions of dollars. One of the defendants bragged about how easy it was to commit fraud at the bank, saying it was the best bank in the region.
The four people are accused of trying to smuggle a high-precision grinding machine to people in Russia.
The Ukrainian who was held in June at the request of the United States government was arrested on Tuesday in Latvia, according to the Justice Department. It is not clear if the defendants have entered a formal plea, as the charging documents haven’t been made public.
United States Attorney General David Peace indicts Alex Ippolitov, Boris Livshits, Alexey Brayman and Vadim Yermolenko in the Russia War on Democracy
Among those items, according to the indictment, were a “chip set” of 45 advanced semiconductors; a $45,000 “low noise cesium frequency synthesizer”; high-quality spectrum analyzers used in electronic testing; and pricey oscilloscopes and signal generators. Many dual use devices can be used for both military and civilian purposes.
Mr. Peace said that his office would not relent in its pursuit of those who procured US technology to be used in the Russia war on democracy.
In addition to Mr. Grinin, a 47-year-old Moscow resident, the Justice Department identified the defendants as Alexey Ippolitov, 57, of Moscow; Boris Livshits, 52, a former Brooklyn resident now living in St. Petersburg, Russia; Svetlana Skvortsova, 41, of Moscow; Vadim Konoshchenok, 48, of Tallin, Estonia; Alexey Brayman, 35, of Merrimack, N.H.; and Vadim Yermolenko, 41, of Upper Saddle River, N.J.
The defendants face various conspiracy, fraud and money laundering counts, and could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison apiece if convicted of the most serious charges. Four of them are still on the run.
Mr. Yermolenko, an American citizen, and Mr. Brayman, a permanent U.S. resident identified in court filings as an Israeli citizen, were arraigned on Tuesday.
Mr. Brayman was released on a $150,000 bond and subject to conditions that included turning in his passports and wearing an electronic monitoring device. The presumption of innocence was given to Mr. Brayman by his lawyer, David Lazarus.
Mr. Yermolenko was released after posting a $500,000 bond partially secured by his house. The lawyer for Mr. Yermolenko declined to comment.
Brayman-Yermolenko, the alleged officer of the Russian intelligence agency, has been charged with smuggling a firearm into Russia
The alleged officer of the Russian intelligence agency, the so-called “SFS”, was arrested last week in eastern Europe after attempting to smuggle twenty cases of US-made silencers into Russia.
The DOJ says Brayman and Yermolenko based in the US “fabricated shipping documents and invoices to ship items around the world” before sending them to Russia.