A former Russian nuclear official was sentenced to 48 months in prison on Tuesday and ordered to pay $2.1 million for awarding contracts to U.S. companies in exchange for more than $2 million in bribes.
Vadim Mikerin, former president of Tenam, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Russian state-run company Rosatom, pled guilty in August to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, reported Reuters.
U.S. conspirators paid Mikerin more than $2 million in bribes to secure contracts for U.S. firms buying downblended highly enriched uranium from Rosatom, which was Russia's sole exporter of uranium to nuclear power companies around the world, according to The Associated Press.
Mikerin, who lived in Chevy Chase, Md., disguised the payments as consulting fees and other fake expenses and sent the money to shell company bank accounts in Switzerland, Cyprus and Latvia. The money was given to Russian nuclear energy officials in exchange for no-bid contracts to U.S. companies involved in purchasing uranium from disassembled Russian nuclear warheads, which was then used in U.S. nuclear power plants.
At one point, 10 percent of all U.S. electricity was generated by uranium bought through the arrangement, according to Bellona.
After a seven year investigation into Mikerin, U.S. federal agents attempted to convince him to work undercover and assist in their investigation into senior Russian energy officials, but Mikerin refused and was arrested.
Mikerin has been detained since October 2014 and will get credit for time served. He then plans to return to his home country, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"Vadim Mikerin is a devoted husband, father and grandfather," his lawyer, Jonathan Lopez, said Tuesday. "He is relived that he will eventually be able to return to his family, to the country he loves and to which he has devoted his professional career."
One of the men Mikerin conspired with was Daren Condrey, former owner of Transport Logistics International, who pled guilty in June to conspiring to make bribe payments to Mikerin in exchange for uranium shipping contracts, which is a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Boris Rubizhevsky, 64, of Closter, N.J., also pled guilty in June in connection to the probe.
