Businessman and son of the Krasnoyarsk governor Artem Uss was helped to escape from house arrest in Italy by six or seven accomplices, there is also a “reasonable suspicion” that they used a frequency jammer when the electronic bracelet was damaged. Corriere della Sera writes about this with reference to sources.
According to the newspaper, the US Department of Justice immediately after the decision of the Milan court on Uss’s house arrest warned his Italian colleagues about the high risk of escape. The agency emphasized the need to eliminate such a risk, since it is a person in respect of whom an extradition request is being considered, and to place the businessman in custody. The US Department of Justice then recalled that over the past three years, six suspects of interest to the United States have escaped from house arrest in Italy.
At the same time, the Prosecutor General’s Office considered the presence of Uss’s wife, Maria Yagodina, at home in Italy, as a decisive factor in the decision on house arrest. The woman left Italy a week before her husband’s escape, on March 13. She explained that she was forced to fly to Russia to look after her youngest son, and expects to return on April 13.
Uss escaped about a week ago, March 22. He cut off the electronic bracelet, the signal about this came at 14:00. The carabinieri who arrived at the house found that the armored door to Uss’s apartment was closed, rescuers had to be called in to open it, and the TV was on in the apartment itself.
A court in Italy on the eve of the escape, on March 21, approved the extradition of a businessman to the United States on two of the four counts. Uss’ team of lawyers said that in American jurisdiction he faces up to 75 years in prison.
Investigators in Italy are studying the version according to which Russian special services helped Uss escape, wrote La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera.
The Russian Consulate General in Milan called the term “hid” in relation to Uss incorrect. They suggested the phrase “left the place of his detention.” Uss’s father, Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Uss, after his son’s disappearance from house arrest, suggested that he could be of “some interest in the big geopolitical game.”
Uss Jr. was detained last October at the airport in Milan at the request of the United States, when he was about to fly to Turkey. U.S. prosecutors charged him with violating U.S. sanctions against Russia and Venezuela, money laundering, and illegal transactions. The US Department of Justice suspects that Uss, along with his accomplices, was involved in schemes to sell oil from Venezuela using front companies and cryptocurrencies, they also purchased dual-use sanctioned electronics and military technologies from Western countries.
