It was learnt that 40-year-old Uss, who is the son of a Siberian governor, escaped after breaking his electronic bracelet.
Artem Uss, a politically connected Russian who is facing extradition to the US on charges of evading US sanctions and money laundering has reportedly escaped from house arrest in Milan, Italy.
It was learnt that 40-year-old Uss, who is the son of a Siberian governor, escaped after breaking his electronic bracelet.
He was accused by American prosecutors of being involved in a global network that illegally imported US technology to support President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Bloomberg News reports that one of Uss’s Italy-based lawyers said the Russian’s whereabouts were still unknown. “We can confirm Artem Uss has escaped and we are shocked about that,” the lawyer said.
The fugitive Russian may already have left Italy on a private plane, the Corriera del Sera reported, without saying where it got the information from. Alerted after Uss took off the electronic bracelet, police rushed to his home and broke down the door, but he had already disappeared, it said.
Uss gave Italian authorities the slip on Wednesday with the help of Russian agents, said Vladimir Osechkin, a human rights activist and founder of Gulagu.net, who said he received information from whistleblowers in Russia’s intelligence services. His account couldn’t be independently confirmed.
According to the report, Uss was arrested last October in Milan on charges that he and his associates had defrauded the US and violated sanctions by buying sensitive US technologies as well as sanctioned Venezuelan oil. He denied any wrongdoing and his father, Alexander, governor of the Krasnoyarsk region, denounced the accusations as politically-motivated.
About six weeks, later a court released Uss to house arrest. A Milan court on Tuesday approved his extradition, though only on the charges of violating the embargo on buying Venezuelan oil and bank fraud.
Russia last year filed its own money-laundering charges against Uss, who in January asked a Milan court to send him back to his own country.
Russia has shown interest in swapping him for imprisoned former US Marine Paul Whelan, following the successful exchange of WNBA star Brittney Griner, in a bid to avoid him falling into US custody, according to two people close to the Russian intelligence services.