Japanese gang leader admits to conspiring to sell nuclear materials to Iran Crime news

Takeshi Ebisawa faces a maximum sentence of life in prison after pleading guilty to six charges in a Manhattan court.

A Japanese gang leader has pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell nuclear materials from Myanmar to Iran along with drug smuggling and weapons crimes, authorities in the United States said.

The US Department of Justice said in a statement that Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, a member of the Yakuza gang, pleaded guilty to six charges in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 9.

According to prosecutors, in 2020 Ebisawa told an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and a DEA source that he cleared a large amount of thorium and uranium that he wished to sell.

In response to Ebisawa’s repeated inquiries, the undercover agent agreed to help Ebisawa broker the sale of nuclear materials to someone who was posing as an Iranian general, prosecutors said.

Ebisawa then offered to supply the secret partner with plutonium, which would be “better” and “stronger” than uranium for making nuclear weapons, according to prosecutors.

The Justice Department said the yellow, powdery substance that Ebisawa’s co-conspirators showed undercover agents was later determined in a laboratory analysis to contain detectable amounts of uranium, thorium and plutonium.

Ebisawa also conspired to broker the purchase of U.S.-made surface-to-air missiles and heavy weapons to arm multiple ethnic armed groups in Myanmar, and to accept large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine as partial payment for the weapons, according to prosecutors. .

US officials said they arrested and prosecuted Ebisawa in cooperation with law enforcement partners in Indonesia, Japan and Thailand.

“Today’s appeal should serve as a stark reminder to those who put our national security at risk by trafficking weapons-grade plutonium and other dangerous materials on behalf of organized criminal gangs that the Department of Justice will hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law.” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew J. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Ebisawa, who was previously charged in 2022 with international drug and firearms trafficking crimes, faces life in prison for the most serious charges.