U.S. sentences Russian nuclear official to four years for bribe scheme
By Joel Schectman
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a former nuclear official of Russia’s state-run enterprise Rosatom to 48 months in prison for his role in a scheme that awarded contracts to American companies in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.
Vadim Mikerin, former president of a U.S.-based Rosatom subsidiary, pleaded guilty last summer to helping orchestrate more than $2 million in bribe payments through a web of secret accounts in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland.
Authorities have said those payments went to Russian nuclear energy officials in exchange for contracts to U.S. companies involved in the shipment of uranium from Russia. Attorneys for Rosatom have said Mikerin acted alone.
In considering the sentence, United States District Judge for the District of Maryland Theodore D. Chuang said he weighed the sensitivity of shipping nuclear materials safely through the United States. For that business “to be corrupted by graft is very troubling,” he said.
As president of Tenam, a U.S.-based Rosatom subsidiary, Mikerin oversaw the shipment of uranium from Russia for use in American power plants. Much of that material was drawn from decommissioned Russian weapons under an agreement with Washington known as the “Megatons to Megawatts” program, which converted the uranium from thousands of nuclear warheads for civilian use in U.S. nuclear power plants.
At one point, the arrangement fueled 10 percent of U.S. electricity, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Daren Condrey, the former owner of Transport Logistics International, pleaded guilty in June to conspiring to make bribe payments to Mikerin in exchange for uranium shipping contracts. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it a crime to bribe overseas officials to win business.
Mikerin’s arrest followed a seven year investigation that began initially as a U.S. intelligence probe into Russian nuclear officials, according to court records and people familiar with the matter.
Before arresting Mikerin last year, federal agents had sought to get him to work undercover in its investigation into senior Russian energy officials, according to court records.
In an effort to obtain his cooperation, U.S. federal agents brought him to a “war room” they had set up in an office adjacent to his in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Plastered on the wall were pictures of Mikerin and diagrams of his possible relationship to shell companies and other Russian energy officials, including President Vladimir Putin, according to court records. After Mikerin refused to cooperate, he was arrested.
Mikerin’s attorney Jonathan Lopez of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP had asked the court for a lesser penalty, arguing that while his client served as a conduit for the payments he was neither the mastermind nor the the ultimate beneficiary of the bribes.
But a prosecutor said Mikerin’s scheme was particularly threatening given that nuclear materials were at play. “Why is a Russian official coming to the U.S., soliciting bribes from companies working in these sensitive areas?” said Ephraim Wernick.
(Reporting by Joel Schectman in Washington; Editing by Dan Grebler and Andrew Hay)
