RU IT
Dear friends, colleges and legal professionals!

The pending war of sanctions with collateral damage and unjustified victims cannot be overestimated. On the daily basis, we hear new financial sanctions imposed on legal entities and individuals and what is alarming increasing number of related criminal allegations resulting in arrest warrants, detentions, extraditions and real term convictions.

The latter was beyond reason just few years ago. The literal concept of nowadays sanctions, which are absolutely irrespective of UN Security Council legal instruments, is to weaponize the political and economic rivalry of certain governments with pretext of changing unwanted behavior, protecting minorities, address national threats, etc.
The targeted persons are now selected on random basis and obviously are politically persecuted and intimidated just because they are citizens of certain adversary states legitimately and professionally acting as businesspeople, entrepreneurs, policy makers, government officials, journalists, leaders of opinions, etc. With that, many of such cases remained unnoticed with interest of defendants duly unprotected.

The millennials and any active business people got used to global travel and consider themselves cosmopolitan should be aware of the peril. With global and regional tensions rapidly rising, the personal risk is something that should be taken very seriously.

The allegation of “Conspiracy”, “US dollar denominated payment” or any other “US nexus” and where there is none the universal “US national security interest” prevail in many recent exterritorial criminal cases inspired by US DOJ worldwide. This for sure provides for unlimited discretion for indicting foreign business people in abuse of law. And despite many US legal concepts and crime elements were alien in regional legal systems, with worldwide net of extradition treaties strong diplomatic practices and 97% of conviction rate in US Courts it could be fatal for anyone.

Below you can read the summary of our Client’s case without mainstream preconceptions and shameful deceitful manipulations that were multiplied in last few years.
Overview of criminal allegations
Our client is the national of Russian Federation. He is regional businessperson with some minor interests in Russian fuel and power industry complex and residential construction in Krasnoyarsk region. He was a former manager in JSC “NNK” ( “Independent Oil and Gas Company”) private oil producer in Russia. He also is the single son of the famous Russian politician and Senator, former Governor of Krasnoyarsk region.

On 17/10/2022 he was arrested at Malpensa international airport at duty-free zone awaiting flight to Russia through Turkey. It was a routine private family trip in Italy the country he had visited numerous times and where he had business and family interests.

The legal basis of his detention was the sealed “US vs Orekhov at all” US Federal Indictment dated 26/09/22 against 7 people and the arrest warrant of US Eastern District of New York Court. After about 50 days in Italian prison our Client was allowed for the house arrest. On 22/03/2023 after he lost his first extradition appeal after unprecedented political pressure In Milano Court of appeal and before the cassation proceedings in Supreme Court of Rome, our Client was compulsorily exfiltrated from jurisdiction that openly demonstrated its political hostility to Russia where his current location is.

The US Indictment referred to alleged activity of the international business group of Companies headed and managed by Jury Orekhov a Russian businessman and the CEO where our Client is named as one of the criminal co-conspirators being the shareholder in one of Orekhov’s companies NDA GMBH based in Hamburg, Germany. The group was accused of US uniliteral sanction evasion with the procurement and re-selling of dual-purpose technology and Venezuelan oil products for big industry counterparties in Russia and China including major Russian aluminum producer and Chinese state oil conglomerate.

Our Client is personally indicted in 4 counts interrelated and resolving around conspiracy to circumvent sanctions against Venezuela specifically so-called International Emergency Economic Power Act (IEEPa) - rapidly expanding US legislation against foreign governments and states US considers as adversary. These counts looks mutually exclusive under double jeopardy rule and were all related to alleged purchasing of oil products from Petroleos de Venezuela, а Venezuelan state oil company ( hereinafter PDVSA):

  • Conspiracy to Defraud OFAC – the United States agency responsible for the US sanctions policy that imposed economic sanctions on PDVSa i.e. the company unwanted by the US;
  • Conspiracy to violate IEEPa legislation that included Venezuela and its major company PDVSA in the list of US national threats;
  • Conspiracy to defraud US correspondent banks and conspiracy to launder funds related to sanctioned products through US financial system - both counts systematically appeared in recent US sanction cases as additional charges. In our Client’s case they were based on presumed usage of US dollar as the payment currency under contracts with PDVSa since historically oil product trades worldwide pegged or nominated in US currency.

As mentioned before, these allegations against our Client are based on:

  • his co-ownership of NDA GMBH based in Hamburg – the company established and managed by Orekhov that allegedly acted as counterparty for some oil trades with PDVSA;

  • his sporadic communications with Orekhov that were not limited to NDA business but were rather generalized under conspiracy allegations (few irrelevant messenger platform messages were referred in Indictment and regarded as overt acts).

Remarkably, Dubai independent business and other personal dealings of Orekhov (that were hardly forming any criminal composition) accompanied by his private frivolous and braggart statements mentioned in the Indictment rather than direct participation of our Client in NDA GMBH would serve as the ultimate jurisdictional hook for our Client and the core legal basis of allegations also against him.

With that, it was ignored that our Client affiliated to NDA GMBH which Orekhov had already owned and been managing for many years and that our Client further remained a passive shareholder without signatory rights or managing authority. Our Client never formally signed or authorized any contract on behalf of the company or with the company, never made any single payment and tragicomically never taken the opportunity to visit the NDA GMBH office, ultimately without even benefiting from the company that was almost bankrupt under Orekhov management.

It was ignored that our Client had other reliable businesses and permanent employment in Russia and his German shareholding was not and could not be his priority with Orekhov always having full, unlimited and undisputed CEO authority all the time. However, as you can read below the manipulated media consensus twisted those simple and publicly available facts making our Client the central figure of the charges.
Lawfulness and jurisdiction issues
It is a common knowledge that sanctions against Venezuela including PDVSA being purely political in nature and represents uniliteral instrument of US foreign policy against the government of this Latin-American country. These Sanctions were openly focused on the local regime change, they are also not legally supported and stay illegitimate for the most countries in the world. After some softening and negotiation efforts the new turn of political escalation around Venezuela is evolving right now after the conflicting elections in the country.

Trade operations with PDVSA are conducted in violation of US sanctions in large volumes and on an ongoing basis. According to Bloomberg news agency, deliveries to India alone from Venezuela amount to 1 mln. barrels per day.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm594

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-15/venezuelan-oil-finds-home-in-india-as-u-s-shuns-shipments

1. UN does not support economic sanctions against Venezuela, for years UN representatives and experts claim these sanctions critically affecting humanitarian and economic crisis and undermining human rights in the country. UN commissioner on human rights repeated these statements yet again on 31/01/23. The EU has supported these sanctions only partly. Republic of Italy at various times was the least supporter of Venezuelan sanctions in EU. Up to this date, few dozens of Venezuelan officials were included in EU sanctions together with limited restrictions including weapons import and materials related to repressions imposed - there were no EU restrictions imposed on oil product trades or PDVSA.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/01/un-high-commissioner-human-rights-volker-turk-concludes-official-mission

https://globalsanctions.com/region/venezuela/

Russian and Chinese companies that were named as final consignees in alleged deals involving our Client openly support trade relations with Venezuela and PDVSA despite US secondary sanctions. Other economies like India, Republic of Turkey as well as UAE that were referenced in US Indictment as the headquarters for Orekhov oil trading companies were also generally known for their political support and commercial turnover with Venezuela and its oil industry. However, according to the US Prosecution and DOJ our Client could be be detained either in these countries and could be pleaded guilty upon extradition to US for alleged awareness of deals conducted and effected by his business partner between foreign non-US corporations including government ones with the legal financial funds of this corporations bizarrely labeled by US prosecutors as criminal and laundered.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinese-defense-firm-has-taken-over-lifting-venezuelan-oil-debt-offset-sources-2022-08-26/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-deals-specialreport-idUSKBN23J1N1

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-china-exclusive-idUSKBN28703I

https://nordicmonitor.com/2023/10/turkey-aligns-with-madura-regime-criticizes-un-report-on-rights-violations-in-venezuela/

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/middle-east/special-report-uae-emerges-as-hub-for-companies-helping-venezuela-avoid-us-oi-idUSKBN2930YD/

2. Nowhere in the world, except for the US, trading with Venezuelan oil products is criminalized. US themselves in the scope of imposing sanction policy against non-US entities and individuals for transactions with Venezuela routinely utilize the secondary financial sanction practice and until now we have not been aware of any precedents when this principle was replaced by aggressive criminal prosecution.

https://2017-2021.state.gov/the-united-states-takes-further-action-against-enablers-of-venezuelan-oil-transactions-including-sanctions-evasion-network/

https://hsfnotes.com/sanctions/2022/10/26/doj-charges-russian-and-venezuelan-nationals-in-alleged-global-sanctions-evasion-and-money-laundering-scheme/

Moreover, in 2022 due to pure economic reasons and during our Client’s extradition proceedings, the US conducted few rounds of diplomatic meetings with Venezuelan government to discuss US sanction lifting and one of the results of those discussions was US Oil Corporation Chevron Corp allowed to operate in Venezuela together with some EU companies, including Italian Eni. The similar efforts were promoted also through 2023.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/venezuelan-oil-gets-more-us-buyers-chevron-steps-up-loadings-2023-04-28/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/venezuelas-pdvsa-signs-spot-sale-contracts-demands-prepayment-documents-2023-10-25/

3. Important to note that our Client does not have any even minimal jurisdictional connection with the US soil or Eastern District of New York. He is neither US citizen nor Tax resident, he does not have any US based assets, US company participations, bank accounts, US business partners, counterparties or US business projects. He visited US only once, 27 years ago under the school exchange program. Alleged oil products from Venezuela never passed US border, they have never been exported/imported from/to US and consequently could not be subject of US export control or any announced oil smuggling claims.

4. The only jurisdictional hook and exclusive aspect of claimed criminal activity eligible for US jurisdiction and Eastern District of New York that was described in allegations against our Client is US dollar denominated payments under the re-selling delivery contract for fuel oil between Dubai based and owned by Orekhov OPUS Energy and Melissa Traiding, on one hand, and PDVSA brokers on the other, where the unnamed Chinese Government Oil Conglomerate was the end buyer of that product.

With that, there is absolutely no connection of our Client to these Dubai companies indicated in the Indictment and to the opposite American prosecution citing Orechov’s confirmation that he is the sole UBO of these companies.

5. According to Indictment, the above payments originated and ended in non-US banks of non-US jurisdictions. However according to US prosecution any payments passing through US financial system due to the correspondent interbank relations and selection of US dollar as the payment currency between non-US counterparties under the contract, alone constitute the basis for the criminal charges of our Client. With that the US correspondent banks must have made commission and benefited on that payment processing.


6. Regarding the alleged deals with Russian counterparty, unnamed “Aluminum company”, US prosecution does not specify any single dollar denominated deal or whatever should be considered as the US crime or/and subject of US jurisdiction - they only presume it with haughtily claiming “Indeed” as their only argument.

UC Rusal, the only known aluminum conglomerate in Russia, in its official statement claimed that it did not have any relevance to any of the PDVSA trading allegations against our Client. That public announcement was based on the company audit presumably conducted under US supervision (according to agreement between Rusal and OFAC the company remains under US government supervision and is obliged to report to US authorities). We also do not know of any pending OFAC or DOJ investigation against UC Rusal or its managers for alleged dealings with NDA GMBH including any claims of deficient compliance.
Political circumstances of the case
We strongly believe that US prosecution initially planned to utilize the detention of our Client as a serios information occasion and mean to impose political pressure on Russian Federation in the scope of the Ukraine conflict. The other manifested purpose was the prisoner’s swap deals with our Client being the most politically connected Russian arrested at that time with western and US media labeling him as “Putin’s nepo baby”, “son of the closet ally of Putin”, etc.

This unambiguous signal due to the unprecedented allegations and the status of the person detained was the act of pure intimidation and blackmail hinting to Russian elite families and PEP’s, Russia’s allies and counterparties especially in the context of the newly imposed oil embargo and other sanctions against the country.

1. Upon formation in 2022, US Taskforce “Kleptocapture” aggressively announced the headhunt for famous Russians and their relatives in the context of Ukraine conflict. Expedite criminal case and arrest of our Client followed just few months after and was one of the first examples. The US prosecution emphasized and openly articulated its political motivation in numerous public statements, background of our Client, prosecution strategy, requests to Italian authorities, and what is the most important conducted PR campaign, ensuing manipulative media coverage and unprecedented public promotion of the case.

The special and major attention was focused on the position of our Client’s father as the famous politician, Governor of the biggest region of Russia at that time - the person against whom the sanctions of US, Canada and UK were imposed and who supported policy of Russia in Ukraine as the public official. In arrest warrant carelessly and quickly drawn up, the attached photo of our Client actually represents the former staff member of his father (the obvious fact that Italian Court shamelessly ignore). It was accompanied by the deceitful claim of our Client’s location in US during alleged criminal conduct and his further escape.

Further, the information is focused on job positions of our Client and interests in Russian Energy sector as the economic foundation of Russian government, with alleged large available financial resources and means of international and presumable government support.

The swap option for our Client for US citizens detained in Russia became the public topic. On the 20/10/22 just few days after his detention this option was initially signaled by the White House Press Secretary and would be referred further in western media speculations.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/10/20/press-gaggle-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-infrastructure-act-implementation-coordinator-mitch-landrieu-en-route-pittsburgh-pennsylvania/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brittney-griner-appeal-prisoner-trade-update-11666623534

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/italy-caught-a-russian-fugitive-then-he-vanished/08307428-6c59-4aee-9377-4f6169cb5b70

2. Despite of the fact that US indictment allegations against our Client are limited to previously mentioned 4 counts covering exclusively alleged transactions with PDVSA, media outlets are also tie him to alleged business deals involving dual purpose procurement of microchip technology for Russian counterparties intentionally mixing our Client allegations with those of the other individuals in the Indictment. That served to build and promote the case against detained Russian citizen in the environment of dominating Russophobia surrounding Ukraine conflict.

With that, according to US prosecution, the alleged deals took place long before Ukraine conflict and obviously did not relate to its material support. It was neither referred in the US Indictment that alleged microchips were really procured and utilized for Russian military contractors, and there were vague presumptions, that should not be taken seriously. It seems that the US export control legislation was not violated as the counterparties in the US indictment were not Russian entities and the required exporting licenses were likely duly received. This position could be likely confirmed in Orekhov’s publicly undisclosed extradition proceedings in Germany that eventually failed, with German BAFA presumably taking side of the defendant.

Despite of that, those allegations were deceitfully inflated to the scale of the largest war preparation conspiracy “blessed by president Putin” - far-fetched rubbish aiming at fueling Ukraine hysteria, discriminating Russian businesspeople and maintaining necessary political pressure serving for US prosecution as an instrument of pretrial detention and Court decision furthering extradition of our Client. Consequently, the vague, weak and uninteresting Venezuela allegations were replaced by Machiavellian Ukraine mainstream agenda. It was looking shamefully ridiculous in reflection of hundreds of billions injected by US and their Atlantic partners with 3 bln. EUR injected by Italy alone into Ukraine war.

3. The US DOJ loud announcement that followed on 19/10/22 opened abovementioned smear campaign denigrating our Client: “As alleged, the defendants were criminal enablers for oligarchs, orchestrating a complex scheme to unlawfully obtain U.S. military technology and Venezuelan sanctioned oil through a myriad of transactions involving shell companies and cryptocurrency. Their efforts undermined security, economic stability and rule of law around the world”.

The remarkable discrepancy of those misrepresentations and the real material allegations in the Indictment was never taken into account by the mainstream media. To the opposite, this trick had a full success as the spectrum of absurd insinuations against our Client further varied from “important spy” to “military oligarch”, surpassing, distorting and perverting what was really indicted to him and even to other defendants.

https://www.unionesarda.it/en/sardinia/quot-thanks-putinquot-the-escape-amp-the-sardinian-blitz-of-uss-m0haoabn

https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2023/03/26/news/armi_russia_inchiesta_artem_uss-393781602/

https://cepa.org/article/the-kremlin-assassins-vs-spies/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/23/russian-accused-of-smuggling-military-tech-escapes-house-arrest-in-italy

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/05/russia-ukraine-war-spy-escapes-italy-fiat-punto/

4. The manipulative distortion is also visible in the Orekhov’s extradition media coverage. Being clearly the central figure in the US indictment he unlike our Client almost immediately disappeared from the agenda right after his routine arrest in Germany mentioned in local German media. There were no follow up to his extradition proceedings that ended in liberation from the custody. No one has ever mentioned the publicly available fact that Orekhov sold the shares in NDA GMBH and resigned as the Director – exiting the Company that was sanctioned together with him by US OFAC.
Unlike our Client, Orekhov was never included in EU sanctions. Being on the loose he was never been included in any FBI or US Department wanted lists, no bounties were proposed for his arrest, since, very fortunately for him, the political persecution motive did not dominate in his personal case, he has never represented a valuable object for prisoner swaps and German judicial system in the absence of US overwhelming political pressure was relatively free to demonstrate the legal sovereignty and follow high legal standards.

https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/hamburg-russe-wegen-verstoss-gegen-sanktionen-angeklagt-a-eb7db587-c566-46c2-bdc5-3bfa38e6b7c5

5. Abovementioned discriminatory information campaign provided basis for irrelevant prejudice and accusatory assessment of our Client in the context of Ukraine conflict from both public opinion, government bodies, officials and even judges granting the extradition. It was to the extent that even the Milano Court of Appeal and General Italian Prosecutor commented on that nonexistent legal allegations (that were never legally leveled by US) but finally ruled out them in the extradition case.

Directly during the adjudication by the Court, the large speculative article was expressly published by Bloomberg (the world’s most respected news agency) solely dedicated to our Client labeling him as the supposed part of the key scheme of material support of Ukranian conflict authorized by the Russian President, the speculation which later would inflict the informational storm and numerous reposts and comments. It was preceded by the request from Bloomberg reporter in Italy who passed to our Client’s Italian legal team the accusatory question that we would like to quote: “…please comment on your Client’s complicity in Russia’s unconscionable unprovoked war in Ukraine…”. As a result, the lawyers reasonably refused to participate in such tendentious interview.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-03-15/secret-chip-deals-allegedly-help-us-technology-flow-to-russia-despite-sanctions

Few weeks later, the Milan Court of appeal decided in favor of extradition of our Client based on the Venezuela embargo allegations, thus breaching not just double criminalization principle but also overriding the negative position of Italian General prosecutor, amazingly trampling the Italian political legacy as well as European legal environment by actually supporting unilateral and politically motivated sanctions that refers only to US foreign policy. The Court bizarrely equate oil products to double purpose equipment, and US unilateral sanctions against Venezuela to EU and Italy supported sanctions against Russia referring to irrelevant EU legislation instead of Italian law.

As mentioned above, neither Italy nor EU supported any Venezuelan embargo, rather limited sanctions were imposed on the list of officials, warfare and so-called repression materials. The Five Star Movement party in Italy was in charge of Italian Parliament resolution condemning any interference in Venezuela affairs in a move to protect the interests of Italian nationals living in the country. Moreover, no criminalization of sanction evasion existed in Italy and EU at the moment of our Client’s arrest – the relevant EU legislation was introduced as follow up to sanctions against Russia only in December of 2022 with consecutive asynchronous adoptions by EU members and EU Council during 2023-2024.

6. Immediately after the arrest of our Client, Italian media leading publications will speculate on the solidarity, correct political choice of the new Italian Prime Minister and the test of loyalty to the Atlantic partners when extraditing our Client to US. After the legal and reasoned release of our Client for the house arrest due to his positive profile, personality, business, family interests and real estate in Italy, the US authorities and Italian prosecutor would aggressively protest with a request to return our Client to prison for the entire period of extradition.

This democratic restrictive measure used generally in Italy and is an equivalent to imprisonment in case of detainee consent to wear electronic bracelet. It is not challenged even for serious criminals despite of the high scale of escapes happening weekly that sometimes include mafia members, traffickers and other dangerous mobsters (Nadragenta killer Massimiliano Sestito escaped house arrest twice with the second attempt taking place in 2023).

https://www.milanotoday.it/cronaca/massimiliano-sestito-catturato.html

https://www.lastampa.it/esteri/2022/10/24/news/trafficava_dallitalia_in_tecnologie_militari_allucraina_ecco_perche_lestradizione_negli_usa_di_artem_uss_il_russo_arres-12195942/

The application for the arrest of our Client by US prosecution directly stated that he would be guaranteed for long-term imprisonment. That pre-defined extrapolation served as the “danger of escape” argument. At the same time, the punishment included either financial punishment in the form of a fine or shockingly disproportionate term of imprisonment with unclear criteria for their application. Based on the cumulative charges against our Client, rather common to US prosecution practices, he could potentially face up to 75 years in prison, a life sentence for allegedly violating unilateral US financial sanctions outside US jurisdiction and because his business partner allegedly effected US dollar denominated deal.

7. During our Client’s house arrest and during the Court adjudication of the extradition appeal by the request of the Special Prosecutor our Client was searched by Guardia Finanza. His credit cards and phones including the one he was contacting his lawyers were seized with a view to their subsequent transfer to the American authorities outside the extradition procedure.

The explanation we considered as probable was to find an artificial cause for our Client second detention in order to impose additional pressure on him, as well as to provide US prosecution with additional evidence to fight our Client’s cassation appeal in the Supreme Court of Rome.

8. After our Client exfiltration, the Italian media will be concerned about the complications for the foreign policy and allied relations between the United States and Italy and the real danger of the host party canceling the visit of Italian Prime Minister to Washington.

The Minister of Justice will initiate disgraceful interference in courts independence resulting in the investigation against the judges who approved the house arrest of our Client, the move that constitutes a direct government attack on democracy and the interference with the independence of the Italian Court. According to some media sources, the presiding Judge was fired with investigation started against her. That resulted in a serious legal collision and polemics between Ministry of Justice and the Magistrates.

https://www.corriere.it/esteri/23_aprile_30/caso-artem-uss-dipartimento-stato-usa-corriere-molto-delusi-la-fuga-ma-apprezziamo-meloni-7f95ce9c-e6c7-11ed-9136-d5229c509a57.shtml

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/italian-judges-face-disciplinary-action-over-russian-fugitive/

https://www.ft.com/content/ef954419-f2a3-41da-aaa6-da6771d0c95a

https://www.questionegiustizia.it/tag/artem-uss

The Italian Prime Minister would bizarrely refer to negligence of the Court for house arrest decision and questioning the failure to immediately detain our Client after he lost his first extradition appeal, calling it as “anomaly”.

Even though not all policy makers should be the legal experts such reasoning looked strange and alarming as it was inconsistent with due process and legal practice as the repeated detention in prison could be reaction only to the wrong behavior of the defendant during the house arrest. The extradition procedure was still pending with the second stage of cassation appeal already on the table with pre-defined restrictive measure of house arrest irrevocable.

US representatives would further resonate in expressing their disappointment and at the same time admiration for Italy’s “courageous” act of political revenge in illegal seizure of our Client’s family assets for subsequent nomination of him by Italy in EU sanction list.

https://www.ansa.it/english/news/world/2023/04/15/clear-up-anomalies-in-uss-case-says-meloni_5b95fffa-b021-49f9-b2dd-8f80fd34f79d.html

However, the obvious anomaly that was ignored is that from the very first moment of our Client’s detention and throughout the entire period of extradition he was openly and cynically discussed as an important political hostage. He was not regarded as person having rights and freedoms, but labeled as an object for bargaining, a valuable gift within the framework of Italy’s allied obligations, a kind of “bad Russian in a cage” discriminated by default because of his nationality and political status of his family members.

Neither the situation in Ukraine nor the political position of our Client’s father has any reasonable connection with the alleged crimes and the essence of the charges brought. However, this is exactly what the media charged our client with the skillful presentation of DOJ and Kleptocapture, stigmatizing him from the very beginning of detention and identifying him as a suitable object for legal reprisals.

9. Above specified political logic and motives for the persecution of our Client are confirmed by the circumstances of his inclusion in US and EU sanctions. Completely unlike Orekhov (included in US sanctions along with his companies NDA GMBH and OPUS Energy), OFAC put our client on SDN list almost two months after his detention and few days after he was placed under house arrest - explaining this move solely by his family ties (“the adult son of his father”) to a major Russian politician and the Governor of the largest region of the Russian Federation, Krasnoyarsk territory, as an official and a formal accomplice of events in Ukraine.

https://www.state.gov/furthering-the-united-states-effort-to-hold-russia-to-account-for-its-war-against-ukraine/

Being included in the American SDN our client de jure did not have access to the American dollar system and was toxic for any American counterparties. In parallel with US criminal charges in case of extradition he would be almost completely deprived of rights including the limited choice of the paid defense attorneys and essential paid services like medical care. Small number of American law firms are licensed by the US Department of the Treasury to provide services to sanctioned persons. Such retainer is not personally acceptable to everyone due to a subjective assessment of the risk of being either sanctioned or criminally prosecuted in the United States for dealings with a sanctioned person.

10. The nomination of our Client by Italy for EU sanctions in order to legitimize the urgent and illegal seizure of his family assets by the local Treasury and Ministry of Justice represented pure outrage. Immediately after our Client’s exfiltration Italian legal authorities including Minister Carlo Nordio (in an apparent move of political revenge and clumsy excuse to US authorities) explicitly admitted they would punish him at any costs. The government of Italy fulfilled its promise with lighting speed utilizing the Italian counter-terrorism legislation to justify the arrest of the assets.

https://easternherald.com/2023/04/21/italian-authorities-try-to-freeze-the-assets-of-the-son-of-the-ex-head-of-the-krasnoyarsk-territory/

In a furtherance and at Italy’s introduction, our Client was sanctioned by EU bizarrely labeling him as “leading businessperson in the Russian Federation” - the term exploited before solely in case of famous Russian tycoons (named as Oligarchs) presumably influancing Russian government policy and/or benefiting from the government. EU thus farcically related him to the largest enterprises and industries supporting the Russian government in the Ukrainian conflict, and referring to his father publicly expressing rather sincere natural gratitude to the President of the Russian Federation in connection with the dramatic events associated with his only son. With that, we know many examples when US President personally condemning the detention or honoring the return of US citizens to their homeland.

Finally, Ukraine which interests US and EU partners were supposed to protect, somehow completely forget about sanctioning our Сlient. The government of Ukraine finally fixed this grave inconsistency only on 27/11/2023, right before US and Italy reported about their joint investigation and made their notorious bounty announcements. This again clearly emphasized the politically motivated persecution of our Client in an aggressive hostage-taking move with the absence of any material connection with his criminal charges.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-21/italy-freezes-assets-of-russian-who dodged-us-sanctions-charges

https://www.europeansanctions.com/2023/04/italy-freezes-assets-of-artem-uss/

https://tass.com/politics/1637323

11. The investigation into our Client’s exfiltration from house arrest represented the continuation of persecution and political theater where Italy plays the role of extra. It is generally known that our Client announced he was in Russia - the fact officially confirmed by Russian legal authorities and affirmed by the Supreme Court of cassation in Rome that officially canceled extradition procedure. Our Client also stated he was always open for US prosecutors questioning him using the relevant legal support treaty mechanism (interesting to note that they definitely could but never expressed any interest during many months of his arrest in Italy).

However, six month later the Italian authorities issued a search warrant for our Client and his alleged accomplices accusing them in transnational organized crime conspiracy for exfiltrating our Client to Russia. It was accompanied by US State Department inclusion of our Client in the transnational organized crime wanted list. Putting businessperson and manager to the same list with dangerous international criminals speaks for itself and needs no comments on political motivation.

Italian and US investigation teams proudly announced the findings and mentioned the scale of the work conducted. Unfortunately, it seems nobody questioned again, who were they actually hunting and was this legal safari worth it? Did it really correspond to public interest the rule of law and security or just served someone’s immediate agenda, PR media plan or career perspectives?

We would like to stop here. Obviously, the cooperation and teambuilding of enforcement and intelligence services for the purpose of Atlantic solidarity and Ukraine casus belly stays the core element for this and many other successful shows to continue. Still, we sincerely hope that the Italian Republic would restore its legal sovereignty and long-lasting legal tradition. We hope that the current political momentum would be replaced someday by peaceful pragmatism, wisdom and diplomacy.

Otherwise, we foresee the hopeless future where the global economic competition would be replaced by total war. The mutual “hostage-taking” authorized by the governments would become the new negotiation norm. The abuse of law and deprivation of personal rights and freedoms would potentially serve as justifiable remedy to fight foreign hostility, whether real or fictional. Any failed politically charged prosecution or enforcement would result in the consecutive bullying, prosecution or extradition of lawyers, Judges and public officials who refrained.

It is our professional responsibility not to allow that to happen. Bad times will pass and good times will come.

Sincerely yours,

Legal team of Artem Uss