US charges Yakuza gang leader with attempting to sell nuclear material to Iran

The head of a Japanese crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium in the belief that Iran would use it to make nuclear weapons, US prosecutors have alleged.

Federal officials said Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, and others showed samples of nuclear materials that had been transported from Myanmar to Thailand to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] agent, The Guardian reports.

The agent was posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker and claimed they had access to an Iranian general.

Samples of the seized material were later found to contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, media reports said.

DEA administrator Anne Milgram said the allegations demonstrated the “depravity” of arms and drug smugglers.

“As alleged, the defendants in this case trafficked in drugs, weapons, and nuclear material – going so far as to offer uranium and weapons-grade plutonium fully expecting that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons,” Milgram said in a statement on Wednesday.

“This is an extraordinary example of the depravity of drug traffickers who operate with total disregard for human life.

The nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar who had been mining uranium in the country, according to prosecutors.

Ebisawa had proposed that the leader sell uranium through him in order to fund a weapons purchase from the general, court documents allege.

According to prosecutors, the leader in Myanmar provided samples, which a US federal lab found contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that “the isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons-grade, meaning enough of it would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.

Ebisawa, who prosecutors allege is a leader of a Japan-based international crime syndicate, was among four people who were arrested in April 2022 in Manhattan during a DEA sting operation.

He has been jailed awaiting trial and is among two defendants named in a superseding indictment. Ebisawa is charged with the international trafficking of nuclear materials, conspiracy to commit that crime, and several other counts.

Members of Japan’s yakuza, a catch-all word for a network of underworld organisations – have boosted their overseas presence in recent years as they move away from traditional sources of income such as protection rackets and prostitution, and amid a crackdown on their activities by Japanese authorities.

In 2012 the US Treasury Department said it had frozen the assets of the Yamaguchi-gumi – Japan’s most powerful yakuza gang – and banned it from conducting business in the US in response to its increasing involvement in drug and human trafficking, money laundering and other transnational crimes.

An email seeking comment was sent to Ebisawa’s attorney, Evan Loren Lipton, the Associated Press said.

US attorney Damian Williams said Ebisawa “brazenly” trafficked the material from Myanmar to other countries.

“He allegedly did so while believing that the material was going to be used in the development of a nuclear weapons programme, and the weapons-grade plutonium he trafficked, if produced in sufficient quantities, could have been used for that purpose,” Williams said in the news release.

“Even as he allegedly attempted to sell nuclear materials, Ebisawa also negotiated for the purchase of deadly weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.”

The defendants are scheduled to be arraigned on February 22 in federal court in Manhattan.