Man who smuggled military tech to Russia sentenced to 3 years in US jail

WASHINGTON – A Russian man who had pleaded guilty to US charges that he smuggled large quantities of American-made military-grade microelectronics to Russia was sentenced to three years in prison on July 17, the US Justice Department said.

Maxim Marchenko, 52, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release after he gets out, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The United States and its allies have imposed multiple rounds of sanctions against Russia to weaken its military capabilities since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022.

Marchenko had been based in Hong Kong and was taken into US custody in September. He and two Russian co-conspirators were accused of using shell companies to conceal the fraudulent procurement of OLED micro-displays.

“The transshipment of military-grade microelectronics through Hong Kong to Russia helps fuel the engine of Russia’s war machine,” said Matthew Axelrod, assistant secretary for export enforcement at the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

“Today’s sentencing is just the latest example of our unceasing efforts to target and disrupt illegal Russian procurement networks,” Axelrod added.

Marchenko pled guilty in a New York court in February to one count of money laundering and one count of smuggling goods from the United States.

Federal prosecutors said OLED micro-displays could be used in rifle scopes, night-vision goggles, thermal optics and other weapons systems.

Marchenko and his co-conspirators falsely represented that the dual-use technology – meaning it had civilian and military applications – was being sent to China, Hong Kong and elsewhere for use in electron microscopes for medical research, according to prosecutors. REUTERS