A Russian who became a naturalized U.S. citizen admitted in a federal court that he sent military technology to his former homeland. The Texas resident and Houston business owner pleaded guilty in a New York City federal court to several crimes including being a foreign agent.
Alexander Fisenko, owner of Arc Electronics, Inc., in Houston, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to a variety of crimes including acting as a foreign agent of the Russian government in the United States, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.
Fishenko, and a group of co-conspirators, were indicted in September, 2012, according to court records obtained by Breitbart Texas. Among other crimes, Fishenko was accused of exporting certain electronic devices to the Russian military without obtaining proper export permits and by misrepresenting who the end-users were when purchasing the devices from distributors. These charges fall under the Arms Export Control Act.
The indictment charges, “On or about and between October 1, 2008 and September 28, 2012, the defendants, together with others, devised and executed a scheme to obtain controlled microelectronics from United States-based manufacturers and distributors and export those commodities to Russian end users, including the Russian military and intelligence services, without obtaining required export licenses.”
Some of these items in the 32-page indictment include, “analog-to digital converters, amplifiers, digital signal processors, microcontrollers, static random access memory chips and field programmable gate arrays.” The indictment charged that these devices could not be produced in Russia. “These microelectronics had applications in a wide range of military systems, including radar and surveillance systems, weapons targeting systems and detonation triggers,” the indictment reads.
Eleven people were charged in the indictments. In addition to Fishenko, four others have pleaded guilty. Six others have pleaded not guilty and three of those are scheduled for trial this month, according to an Associated Press report on KXAN.
The group are charged with shipping about $50 million worth of microelectronic devices to Russia over a 10-year period.
A sentencing date for Fishenko has not yet been scheduled.
Bob Price serves as senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas and a member of the original Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
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