A Russian-Canadian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for illegally shipping electronic components to Russia. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI |
License PhotoJan. 8 (UPI) — A Russian-Canadian man was sentenced Wednesday to more than three years in prison for admitting to shipping millions of dollars’ worth of U.S.-made restricted electronics to Russia. Some of these components were found in weapons and equipment used by Kremlin forces in Ukraine.
Nikolay Goltsev, 38, of Montreal, Canada, was arrested in a New York hotel room in 2023, where authorities seized some $20,000 in connection to his sanctions evasion scheme. In July, he pleaded guilty along with co-defendant Salimdzhon Nasriddinov to conspiracy to commit export control violations.
Goltsev’s wife, Kristina Puzyreva, pleaded guilty in February for her role in laundering money as part of the multimillion-dollar sanctions-evasion scheme and was sentenced to two years in July.
In announcing his 40-month sentence, the Department of Justice called Goltsev the “mastermind” of the global procurement scheme on behalf of sanctioned Russian companies.
“Goltsev and his wife thought they would ‘get rich’ by running an illicit global procurement scheme to supply sanctioned end users in Russia. Instead, they got jail time,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Kevin Kurland of the Department of Commerce said in a statement.
According to court documents, Goltsev received component orders from Russian defense and technology companies and fulfilled them with U.S. manufacturers through SH Brothers Inc. and SN Electronics Inc., two Brooklyn companies he controlled.
Once received, the components were illegally shipped to front companies located in Turkey, Hong Kong, India, China and the United Arab Emirates, where they were redirected to Russia.
Prosecutors said SH Brothers alone made hundreds of shipments valued at more than $7 million.
Some of the components shipped have been discovered in seized Russian weapons and intelligence equipment in Ukraine, according to federal prosecutors, who said some were critical to Russia’s precision-guided weapon systems.
Text message communication between Goltsev and Puzyreva from May 2023, presented by prosecutors, showed that they were aware their actions were in violation of sanctions and that the components they were shipping Russia would be used against Ukraine.
“What is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin waiting for?” Puzyreva asked her husband. “He needs to destroy Ukraine.”
“Yeah, they’re gonna get [expletive] either way,” Goltsev replied.
“He needs to put fear into them. Those losers,” she said, before adding, “I hate [ethnic slur for Ukrainians] anyway.”
Along with the $20,000 federal authorities confiscated from the New York hotel room, the U.S. government has seized nearly $1.7 million in connection with the sanctions-evasion scheme.
“When Russia, its supporters, and its military companies lie and scheme their way around sanctions, they do not just violate the law — they endanger our Ukrainian allies and the freedoms they are fighting to protect,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement. “We cannot allow crimes like those committed by Mr. Goltsev to be ignored; to do so would only increase the risk they will be repeated.”
