U.S. indicts Japanese Yakuza Leader over Selling Nuclear Materials to Iran

The United States has indicted a Japanese leader of the Yakuza transnational organized crime syndicate over his attempts to traffic nuclear materials to Iran. 

Takeshi Ebisawa is accused of conspiring to transfer uranium and weapons-grade plutonium from Myanmar to Iran for use in Iran’s nuclear program, the US Justice Department reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, Ebisawa approached an undercover agent working for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in early 2020 in Thailand, informing him that he had a large quantity of uranium and plutonium and asked him to find a customer for the materials.

The Yakuza leader then sent the DEA undercover agent “a series of photographs depicting rocky substances with Geiger counters measuring radiation, as well as pages of what Ebisawa represented to be lab analyses indicating the presence of thorium and uranium in the depicted substances,” the report added.

Following the DEA’s investigation, the undercover agent told Ebisawa that he could connect him to an associate, who was posing as an Iranian general. The Japanese side then suggested that plutonium would be more “powerful” than uranium for the production of nuclear weapons, offering to supply the material to the “Iranian general.”

The samples provided by Ebisawa were confiscated by Thai authorities and transferred to the US. According to the analysis by a US nuclear forensic laboratory, the samples were proved to include uranium and weapons-grade plutonium.

“It is impossible to overstate the seriousness of the conduct alleged in today’s indictment” against the Japanese Yakuza leader, said Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, adding that he conspired to traffic nuclear uranium and platinum fully aware “the material was going to be used in the development of a nuclear weapons program.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Newsrael News Desk column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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