Russian National Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Evade Export Controls
Russian national Oleg Vladislavovich Nikitin, general director of St. Petersburg, Russia-based energy company KS Engineering, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia to conspiracy to skirt export controls, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia announced in a press release. Nikitin, admitted to attempting to sell a power turbine to a Russian company attempting to use it on an Arctic deepwater drilling platform -- a process banned by the Commerce Department without a license. An unnamed Russian government-controlled business contracted with Nikitin to buy the turbine from a U.S. manufacturer for $17.3 million. Nikitin, along with two others, was arrested in Savannah, Georgia, attempting to carry out the transaction for the turbine.
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The Russian now faces up to five years in prison and substantial fines and forfeitures for conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Export Control Reform Act of 2018. The operation was foiled by Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security along with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with help from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and CBP, according to the release.
“Special Agents of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Office of Export Enforcement (OEE) are committed to bringing sanctions violators, who have willfully chosen to threaten our nation’s security, to justice,” said Ariel Joshua Leinwand, special agent in charge of OEE’s Miami Field Office. “These guilty pleas represent the results of an intensive and collaborative approach with our law enforcement partners to vigorously enforce our nation’s export control laws.”