An alleged leader from Japan’s Yakuza crime syndicates has pleaded guilty to trafficking nuclear materials from Myanmar as part of a global web of trades in drugs, weapons and laundered cash, according to the US Department of Justice.
During an undercover investigation by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2021, Takeshi Ebisawa tried to sell the materials – including uranium and weapons-grade plutonium – to someone he believed was an Iranian general who wanted them for a nuclear weapons program, the department said in a statement.
The 60-year-old Japanese national on Wednesday pleaded guilty in a New York court to conspiring with a network of associates to traffic the nuclear materials out of Myanmar, the department said in a statement.
He also admitted to international narcotics trafficking and weapons charges.
In 2021, Ebisawa told an undercover DEA agent that an unnamed leader of an insurgent group in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, could sell nuclear material through Ebisawa to the fictitious Iranian general, to fund a large weapons purchase, the indictment says.
A year later, US authorities arrested Ebisawa on charges of plotting to distribute drugs in the United States and purchase American-made surface-to-air missiles. Early last year he was also hit with charges over the purported Iranian sale.
“As he admitted in court today, Takeshi Ebisawa brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma,” said acting US attorney Edward Y. Kim for the Southern District of New York.
“At the same time, he worked to send massive quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles to be used in Burma and laundered what he believed to be drug money from New York to Tokyo.”
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been embroiled in a civil war since February 2021 when the Southeast Asian nation’s military ousted the democratically elected government. The country is awash with natural resources such as rare-earth metals and other materials vital for civilian and military technology, including uranium. It remains a major producer of narcotics and has long been a magnet for transnational crime.
During his dealings with the undercover DEA agent, Ebisawa sent pictures “depicting rocky substances with Geiger counters measuring radiation,” according to the indictment, as well as pages of what Ebisawa said were lab analyses “indicating the presence of the radioactive elements thorium and uranium.”
The Department of Justice said Ebisawa “unwittingly introduced an undercover DEA agent…, posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker, to Ebisawa’s international network of criminal associates, which spanned Japan, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, and the United States, among other places, for the purpose of arranging large-scale narcotics and weapons transactions.”
International trafficking of nuclear materials carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, according to the department, which referred to Ebisawa as a leader in the Yakuza, the infamous network of Japanese crime families.
“This case demonstrates DEA’s unparalleled ability to dismantle the world’s largest criminal networks,” said administrator Anne Milgram of the DEA.
“Today’s plea should serve as a stark reminder to those who imperil our national security by trafficking weapons-grade plutonium and other dangerous materials on behalf of organized criminal syndicates that the Department of Justice will hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division.