The accused head of a Japan-based crime syndicate pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges that he conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, from Japan, into the application in Manhattan federal court to weapons and narcotics trafficking charges that carry at least 10 years in prison and the possibility of life behind bars. Sentencing was set for April 9.
Prosecutors say Ebisawa did not know that in 2021 and 2022 he was communicating with a secret source for the Drug Enforcement Administration along with the source's associate, who was an Iranian general. Ebisawa was arrested in April 2022 in Manhattan during a DEA sting.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a press release that the prosecution demonstrated the DEA's “unparalleled ability to dismantle the world's most dangerous criminal networks.”
US Magistrate Judge / Southern District of New York / Handout via REUTERS
She said the investigation revealed “the appalling depth of international organized crime from the trafficking of nuclear materials to the promotion of narcotics trafficking and the arming of terrorists.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim said that Ebisawa admitted at his plea that he “brazenly traded nuclear materials, including weapons-grade plutonium, a- out of Burma.”
“At the same time, he worked to ship large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weapons such as surface-to-air missiles for use on the battlefields of Burma,” he said. .
Court papers said Ebisawa – who US prosecutors say is a prominent Japanese leader Yakuza mafia – to the secret source of the DEA in 2020 that he had access to a lot of nuclear material that he wanted to sell. To support his claim, he sent the source photos showing rocky material with Geiger counters measuring radiation, saying it contained thorium and uranium, the papers said.
The nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethnic terrorist group” in Myanmar that had been mining uranium in the country, prosecutors said. Ebisawa had suggested that the director sell uranium through him to finance the purchase of weapons from the general, according to court documents.
Prosecutors said samples of the alleged nuclear materials were obtained and a US federal laboratory found they contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that the “isotope composition of the plutonium” was of weapons grade, which ' meaning that enough of it would be suitable for use in nuclear weapons.
Department of Justice
Last year, prosecutors posted photos of the nuclear materials allegedly planted by Ebisawa.
Prosecutors also allege that Ebisawa conspired to sell 500 kilograms of methamphetamine and 500 kilograms of heroin to an undercover agent to be distributed in New York. He would also work to clear $100,000 in alleged narcotics money from the US to Japan.
“As he admitted in federal court today, Takeshi Ebisawa trafficked nuclear materials, 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 ship large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weapons such as surface-to-air missiles.” which were to be used on the battlefields of Burma and shipped what he believed to be drugs from New York to Tokyo.”
An email seeking comment was sent to Ebisawa's lawyers.
Yakuza membership will decline to 20,400 in 2023, a third of what it was two decades ago, according to the National Police Agency. He attributed the decline largely to legislation passed to combat organized crime which includes measures such as banning members of designated gangs from opening bank accounts, renting apartments, buying cell phones or insurance.
