Russian National Pleads Guilty to Smuggling U.S. Aerospace Goods to Russia

A Russian, Estonian, and Swiss national pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act for running a scheme, from early 2022 through September 2024, to supply prohibited Russian end users with export-controlled aerospace and aviation components without the required Bureau of Industry and Security licenses. The defendant co-founded a UAE-based trading entity roughly four weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, through which dozens of shipments of U.S.-origin aerospace goods were procured from U.S. companies and reexported to Russia. Sentencing is scheduled for January 13, 2027, with a statutory maximum of 20 years' imprisonment.