Businessman and son of the Krasnoyarsk governor Artem Uss could, having escaped from house arrest in Italy, already fly from Milan Linate International Airport on board a private jet, writes Corriere della Sera.
According to the publication, Uss cut off the electronic bracelet, the signal about this worked around 14:00 local time on Wednesday, March 22. 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.
Now the police are checking video footage from surveillance cameras in the residential complex in which Uss lived, as well as from nearby streets. According to Corriere della Sera, investigators do not rule out that the Russians helped him escape from house arrest.
“As a father, of course, I am very worried about the fate of my son, I don’t know his whereabouts, as well as the details of what happened,” his father, Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Uss, later said, TASS reports.
On the eve of the escape, on March 21, the court approved the extradition of the businessman to the United States on two of the four counts. According to Uss’s legal team, he faces up to 75 years in prison in the United States.
Uss was detained last October at Malpensa airport in Milan at the request of the United States, when he was about to fly to Turkey.
The US Attorney’s Office accused the businessman of violating US sanctions against Russia and Venezuela, illegal transactions and money laundering. The US Department of Justice believes that Uss and the other Russian citizens mentioned in the indictment were involved in schemes for the sale of Venezuelan oil using cryptocurrencies and front companies, and also purchased dual-use electronics and military technology from Western countries.
A court in Italy placed Uss under house arrest at the end of November. The defense insists on his innocence, Uss’s lawyer also assured that the entrepreneur has “activities in Italy, that is, he is not passing through here.” The businessman’s father, Governor Alexander Uss, called the case “political in color”. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov promised that Moscow would follow the Uss case. “We are categorically against and we condemn the practice of such arrests of Russian citizens,” he said.
Uss himself asked to be extradited to Russia – while in Russia he was put on the federal wanted list in the case of money laundering and arrested in absentia. His search by the Russian police, which gives Moscow the right to also demand the extradition of Uss, but to Russia, became known at the end of October 2022, shortly after his detention in Italy.
