Montreal man sentenced in U.S. for exporting weapon components to Russia
Some of the equipment was later found in seized Russian weapons platforms and signals intelligence equipment in Ukraine.
A Montreal man has been sentenced to 40 months in prison by a U.S. federal court for orchestrating an illegal operation to export millions of dollars worth of electronic components to Russia for military purposes.
Nikolay Goltsev, 38, used two companies based in Brooklyn, New York, to acquire electronics from U.S. manufacturers and ship them to Russian companies that were under U.S. sanctions. Some of the components were later found in Russian weapons platforms and signals intelligence equipment seized in Ukraine.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland commented that Goltsev profited from selling U.S. technology to support "Russia's brutal war in Ukraine." According to the U.S. Department of Justice, one of the Brooklyn-based companies sent hundreds of shipments valued at over $7 million to Russia, and authorities have confiscated around $1.68 million linked to the scheme.
In a related case, Goltsev’s wife, Kristina Puzyreva, a Russian-Canadian, was sentenced to 24 months in prison in July for conspiring to launder the proceeds from the illegal export operation. Another co-defendant, Salimdzhon Nasriddinov, is still awaiting sentencing.
