The president of a freight forwarding company in Florida has been indicted on charges related to allegedly smuggling advanced scientific technology to Russia.
A grand jury indicted Kirill Gordei, a 34-year-old Belarus citizen who lives in Hallandale, Florida, and is president of Apelsin Logistics. The company is in Hallandale Beach, a city between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, but also has an address in Russia, an indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida says. Gordei was charged with defrauding U.S. government export regulators and faces up to 20 years in prison.
“Freight forwarders play an outsized role in the export of items overseas and, accordingly, are expected to help uphold the law rather than subvert it,” Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew S. Axelrod said in an announcement. “Here, Kirill Gordei — the president of a freight forwarding company — is alleged to have willfully evaded restrictions designed to degrade the Russian war machine by obfuscating the value and ultimate destination of a mass spectrometer.”
Gordei conspired with others, who weren’t named in the indictment, to ship an Orbitrap Exploris GC 240 Mass Spectrometer — an item that delivers high data quality to accelerate scientific discovery — to Uzbekistan when it was actually destined for Russia, the indictment says. He duped unidentified companies by lying to them about the seller and buyer of the item.
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Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, export controls were implemented to limit Russia’s access to technology that it could use to continue its attack on Ukraine. The spectrometer was on the Controlled Commerce List and required a license from the Bureau of Industry and Security — which Gordei didn’t have — to export it to Russia.
“As alleged, Gordei defrauded U.S. government export regulators and smuggled advanced scientific technology to Russian customers, placing personal profit over national security,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said in an announcement. Apelsin Logistics transports cargo via air and rail, according to its website. It says it has offices in New York and Miami and organizes cargo forwarding from Asia, South America, Europe and Africa.
