A Russian national accused of smuggling military technology has escaped house arrest a day after an Italian court agreed to hand him over to US authorities.
Italian authorities said Artem Uss, who was detained at Milan’s Malpensa airport on an international arrest warrant last October, broke his court-ordered electronic bracelet and left his house in Cascina Vione di Basiglio in the province of Milan.
US prosecutors last year charged Uss and four other Russian citizens with shipping military technology bought from US manufacturers to Russian buyers, some of which ended up on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Investigators said they used a German company to ship the technology. Uss is also accused of shipping oil from Venezuela to Russia in breach of sanctions, and bank fraud.
A Milan appeal court said in a statement on Tuesday it had agreed to the extradition of Uss for smuggling oil, not for smuggling military technologies, citing a lack of evidence. His lawyer, who could not immediately be reached for comment, could have lodged an appeal to Italy’s top court to try to prevent his client from being sent across the Atlantic.
Italian investigators fear Uss has already left the country. He is the son of Aleksander Uss, the governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk.
When Italian police arrived at his apartment to check that he was home, they found the door closed and the TV on. Investigators do not rule out the involvement of Russian intelligence in Uss’s escape.
During the trial, the man’s lawyers suggested that his arrest and extradition would be aimed at a “prisoner exchange”, citing how the US was interested in obtaining from Moscow the release of Paul Whelan, an American businessman who in 2020 was sentenced to 16 years in prison in Russia.
Reuters contributed to this report
