Takeshi Ebisawa, the defendant, is charged with selling nuclear materials that originated in Myanmar to a US undercover agent.
“Going so far as to offer uranium and weapons-grade plutonium fully expecting that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons,” said Anne Milgram, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, about Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, and his co-defendant, Somphop Singhasiri, 61, who were involved in drug trafficking and weapons trafficking.
According to US officials, Mr. Ebisawa is a key figure in the multinational organized crime syndicate known as the Yakuza.
Federal officials claim that an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, posed as a weapons and drug trafficker with connections to an Iranian general, received the nuclear materials from Myanmar and brought them to Thailand.
The source of the nuclear material was an unnamed leader of a “ethnic insurgent group” that mined uranium in Myanmar.
