Black market deals: Nuclear smugglers sought extremist buyers in Middle East
World
Black market deals: Nuclear smugglers sought extremist buyers in Middle East
In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists. The latest known case came in February this year, when a smuggler offered a huge cache of deadly cesium — enough to contaminate several city blocks — and specifically sought a buyer from the Islamic State group. A breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the West means that it has become much harder to know whether smugglers are finding ways to move parts of Russia’s vast store of radioactive materials — an unknown quantity of which has leached into the black market. authorities say.
We can expect more of these cases. As long as the smugglers think they can make big money without getting caught, they will keep doing it.
Constantin Malic, a Moldovan police officer
Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB’s successor agency, are driving the thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished Eastern European country of Moldova, investigators say. The four successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling.
In the age of the Islamic State, it’s especially terrifying to have real smugglers of nuclear bomb material apparently making connections with real buyers.
Matthew Bunn, a Harvard professor
