Authorities within the U.S. have charged a high-ranking yakuza member with trying to promote nuclear materials obtained from Myanmar.
The stunning plot allegedly aimed to fund an unlawful arms deal, elevating issues about world safety and arranged crime’s attain.
According to a superseding indictment unsealed in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday, yakuza chief Takeshi Ebisawa and co-defendant Somphop Singhasiri had beforehand been charged in April 2022 with drug trafficking and firearms offenses, and each have been remanded.
“The defendant stands accused of conspiring to sell weapons-grade nuclear material and lethal narcotics from Burma (Myanmar), and to purchase military weaponry on behalf of an armed insurgent group,” mentioned Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
“It is chilling to imagine the consequences had these efforts succeeded and the Justice Department will hold accountable those who traffic in these materials and threaten U.S. national security and international stability.”
The navy weaponry to be a part of the arms deal included surface-to-air missiles, the indictment alleges.
Prosecutors allege that Ebisawa “brazenly” moved materials containing uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, alongside medicine, from Myanmar.
In 2020, Ebisawa boasted to an undercover officer he had entry to giant portions of nuclear supplies that he sought to promote, offering pictures of supplies alongside Geiger counters registering radiation.
During a sting operation together with undercover brokers, Thai authorities assisted U.S. investigators to grab two powdery yellow substances which the defendant described as “yellowcake.”
“The (U.S.) laboratory determined that the isotope composition of the plutonium found in the Nuclear Samples is weapons-grade, meaning that the plutonium, if produced in sufficient quantities, would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon,” the Justice Department mentioned in its assertion.
One of Ebisawa’s co-conspirators claimed they “had available more than 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of Thorium-232 and more than 100 kilograms of uranium in the compound U3O8 – referring to a compound of uranium commonly found in the uranium concentrate powder known as ‘yellowcake.'”
The indictment claims Ebisawa had steered utilizing the proceeds of the sale of nuclear materials to fund weapons purchases on behalf of an unnamed ethnic rebel group in Myanmar.
Ebisawa faces a compulsory minimal sentence of 25 years in jail for in search of to accumulate surface-to-air missiles and as much as 20 years imprisonment for the trafficking of nuclear supplies internationally.
Prosecutors describe Ebisawa as a “leader of the Yakuza organized crime syndicate, a highly organized, transnational Japanese criminal network that operates around the world (and whose) criminal activities have included large-scale narcotics and weapons trafficking.”
No date was given for trial.
Source: www.dailysabah.com