Artem Uss, the son of the ex-governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, was supposed to be tried in the United States, but the “Serbian mafia” helped him escape from arrest, and now he is free in Russia. “Cold” tells who Artem Uss is, why he is being persecuted and how he managed to escape.
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On March 22, an alarm went off at the police station in Milan from the electronic bracelet of 40-year-old Russian Artem Uss. He had been under house arrest for four months.
Arriving at a villa in the suburbs of Milan, where Uss lived, the police ran into a locked armored door, from behind which came the sounds of a working TV. They had to call the fire brigade to open it. But, once inside, the police discovered that Uss had cut off his electronic bracelet from his leg – the Russian himself was not at the villa.
Artem Uss is the owner of companies in Russia, Italy and Germany and the son of Alexander Uss, Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory at that time. The Italian police detained him in the fall of 2022 at the Milan airport at the request of the United States: the American authorities accused him of money laundering, circumventing sanctions and oil smuggling. The Russian was threatened with up to 30 years in prison.
Uss’s escape became a diplomatic problem for the Italian authorities: under house arrest, Artem Uss waited for the Milan court to decide whether to extradite him to the US authorities. The day before the escape, on March 21, the judge agreed to extradition.
Two weeks after the disappearance, Artem Uss announced that he was in Russia. He did not tell about the details of the escape, but specified that during these “dramatic days” there were “strong and reliable people” next to him.
Who organized the escape
How exactly Uss managed to escape remained a mystery for almost two months. In the early days after his escape, the Italian press speculated that he had flown from Italy on a private jet; according to another version, he left the country, changing several cars, crossed the borders of several European states, using fake documents, and a group of six to seven people helped him. The publications La Repubblica and Corriere Della Serra wrote: the Italian authorities do not exclude that the blitz operation for the disappearance of Artem Uss was organized by the Russian special services.
But on May 31, The Wall Street Journal found out that a “criminal group” from Serbia took part in organizing the escape of Artem Uss. According to American journalists, the businessman really left Italy by car, changing it along the way. He crossed the borders of several countries and flew to Moscow from Serbia. Russian intelligence agents, according to the WSJ, were not directly involved in organizing the escape, considering that the risks were too high.
Why Uss is needed by the USA
Artyom Uss’s father, Alexander, is a man with a rich political biography: he became a member of the Federation Council back in 1993 and has since held many positions in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. He began to lead the region in 2017, and at the end of 2018 he turned out to be the richest governor in Russia; Navalny’s headquarters in Krasnoyarsk estimated the fortune of his family at 1.5 billion rubles. The governor’s son Artem was also engaged in business: he owns a stake in the Sibugol mining company.
But the attention of the US authorities was attracted by another company, in which Artem Uss owned a stake – Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH (NDA GmbH) registered in Germany. According to the US prosecutor’s office, this company bought military and secret dual-use technologies in the United States – that is, goods that can be used not only for peaceful purposes, but also in the creation of weapons. Artem Uss’ company allegedly supplied these technologies to Russian companies associated with the defense complex.
The US prosecutor’s office said that Russian military equipment, which was captured by Ukrainian troops during the war, contained components made in the United States. Because of this, Artem Uss was accused of circumventing sanctions: the United States banned the supply of dual-use goods to Russian companies associated with the defense sector.
Uss is also accused of smuggling oil produced in Venezuela. According to US prosecutors, Artem Uss, along with his NDA partner Yuri Orekhov, allegedly bought oil from the Venezuelan state company PDVSA, which was also sanctioned by the US in 2019, and sold it to China. According to documents, smuggled oil passed through as “green peas” and “raw rice”, and entrepreneurs called Venezuela by the code word “Disneyland”.
Smuggled oil was supplied not only to China, but also to Russia. One of the buyers of Venezuelan oil, the US authorities call “a Russian aluminum company, which is controlled by an oligarch who is under sanctions.” This definition fits the company “Rusal” billionaire Oleg Deripaska: he himself is under sanctions, and in 2018 he left the board of directors of the company to take it out of the blow. Rusal claims that they are not related to the crimes described by the US Attorney’s Office.
At the time when the US imposed sanctions on the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA, Rosneft worked closely with it. In the summer of 2022, Artem Uss’s father, Alexander, joined the board of directors of Rosneft. When it became known about the accusations against Artem Uss, the director of Transparency International – Russia, Ilya Shumanov, suggested that “after PDVSA fell under sanctions, they moved into the shadow zone, came up with a shadow scheme [сотрудничества]”, which was implemented by the son of the Krasnoyarsk governor.
The case against Uss was also brought in Russia
Once in Russia, Artem Uss happily declared: in a situation where Western countries are “playing without rules” with respect to Russians, being in their homeland, albeit in such a “non-standard way”, is a victory. On the same day, the businessman voluntarily appeared before the investigator at the Moscow Interior Ministry. In Russia, a criminal case was also initiated against Artem Uss – under the article on money laundering.
This criminal case was initiated by the Investigative Committee shortly after the Italian police detained Artem Uss at the request of the United States. The Meshchansky Court of Moscow even arrested him in absentia for two months. After that, the Russian authorities, in parallel with the American ones, also sent an extradition request to the Milan court. Artem Uss himself asked the court to send him to Russia.
This is not the first time that Russian law enforcement agencies have opened criminal cases against people who are being persecuted abroad. Thus, they are trying to ensure that the Russians are returned to their homeland. This happened, for example, in the story of the hacker Yevgeny Nikulin, who was arrested in Prague in 2016 at the request of the United States. The Russian authorities filed a fraud case against him and, on this basis, demanded his extradition, but the court decided to extradite him to the United States.
But in the case of the former head of the Ministry of Atomic Energy Yevgeny Adamov, who was detained in Switzerland in 2005 at the request of the United States, Russia managed to get its way. Then the Prosecutor General’s Office opened a case of fraud and abuse of power, and the Swiss court agreed to extradite him to Russia. In the US, Yevgeny Adamov faced up to 60 years in prison; the Russian court sentenced him to 5.5 years of probation.
Artem Uss has also escaped imprisonment so far. They did not send him under arrest: the preventive measure was changed to a written undertaking not to leave.
Two weeks after Artem Uss showed up in Russia, his father resigned from the post of head of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Alexander Uss said that he received a job offer at the federal level: he will become a member of the Federation Council from the region. About the escape of his son from house arrest in Italy, Alexander Uss spoke with pride: “Somewhere inwardly I was convinced that there is justice in the world, and Artem is a Siberian, therefore he will withstand these tests and will definitely return to his homeland.”