Russia on Friday put the son of a senior official arrested in Italy on a U.S. order for alleged sanctions evasion on a wanted list, potentially paving the way for Moscow to demand his extradition.
Artyom Uss, the son of a Siberian governor, was arrested at Milan’s Malpensa Airport on Oct. 17, with Washington saying he had illegally sold U.S. technologies to Russian arms companies.
Russia’s Interior Ministry included the 40-year-old on its list of wanted people published on its website, without specifying which crime he was wanted for.
The TASS news agency, citing Moscow’s Meshansky Court, reported Uss had been charged with “the laundering of money or other property acquired in a criminal way as part of an organized group.”
The crime is punishable by up to seven years in prison.
The charges could pave the way for Russia to demand his extradition.
The Kremlin had condemned Uss’s arrest, saying it would do “everything possible” to defend its citizens.
His father, Krasnoyarsk governor Alexander Uss, has denounced his son’s arrest as “political.”
Uss was one of five Russian nationals arrested on Washington’s request for “unlawful schemes to export powerful” U.S. military technology to Russia.
The U.S. Justice Department said some of these had been “discovered on the battlefields of Ukraine.”
Another Russian national was arrested on similar grounds in Germany on Oct. 17.