A Yakuza ganglord has pleaded guilt to smuggling nuclear materials after a Thai led sting operation, supported by US investigators, thwarted the syndicate member’s actives
A Yakuza ganglord has pleaded guilty to handling nuclear materials and seeking to sell it to facilitate arms deals.
Member of the Japanese criminal underworld, Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, has pleaded guilty to the handling of nuclear materials sourced from Myanmar. Prosecutors claimed Ebisawa “brazenly” moved materials containing uranium and weapons grade-plutonium alongside drugs from Myanmar.
Ebisawa was charged in February of last year with conspiring to sell weapons-grade nuclear materials and lethal narcotics from Myanmar to purchase military grade weapons. The court proceeding came after Thai authorities assisted by US investigators in a Sting operation that seized two powdery yellow substances that the defendants described as “yellowcake”.
The department of justice has stated one of Ebisawa’s co-conspirators had claimed to be in possession of: “More than 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of Thorium-232 and more than 100 kilograms of uranium in the compound U3O8 – referring to a compound of uranium commonly found in the uranium concentrate powder known as ‘yellowcake’.”
US prosecutors described Ebisawa as a “leader of the Yakuza organised crime syndicate, a highly organised, transnational Japanese criminal network that operates around the world (and whose) criminal activities included large scale narcotics and weapons trafficking.”
The military weaponry part of the arms deal included air to surface missiles.
“As he admitted in federal court today, Takeshi Ebisawa brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma,” US attorney Edward Kim said, using another name for Myanmar.
“The (US) laboratory determined that the isotope composition of the plutonium found in the Nuclear Samples is weapons-grade, meaning that the plutonium, if produced in sufficient quantities, would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon,” the Justice Department said.
The allegation brought to Ebisawa suggested he planned to use the proceeds of the sale to fund weapon purchases on behalf of an unnamed ethnic insurgency group in Myanmar.
Ebisawa now faces up to 20 years imprisonment for the trafficking of nuclear materials internationally.
Sentencing will be determined by the judge in the case at a later date.