The US Justice Department announced Thursday's arrest of two men from Kansas on federal charges that they violated government export restrictions by exporting aviation-related technology to Russia.
Kansans Cyril Gregory Buyanovsky, 59, and Douglas Edward Robertson, 55, ran the business KanRus Trade Corporation, which sold and repaired parts for aviation electronics to Russian firms.
The Justice Department stated in 2020 saying the program, which involved fixing equipment, was already unlawful. Since the Russia-Ukraine war started over a year ago, the US has tightened down on unlawful shipments to Russia, which revealed it, per The New York Times.
The matter is being looked into by the FBI and the Office of Export Enforcement in the Commerce Department.
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During an American Bar Association event in Miami on Thursday, Matthew S. Axelrod, assistant secretary for export enforcement at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, said that state actors like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are seeking to "take advantage of fast breakthroughs in technology" and that sensitive technologies supplied to these nations are at the top of their list "from an enforcement" perspective, per US News.
The Kansas defendants are charged with conspiracy, illegally exporting regulated items, falsifying electronic export information, and smuggling, per the Justice Department. If found guilty, the defendants may face up to 35 years imprisonment.
A sentence will be decided by a federal district court judge, who will take into account the US Sentencing Guidelines and other criteria required by law.
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