Japanese crime boss charged with trafficking nuclear materials

Alleged Japanese Yakuza boss Takeshi Ebisawa was set for arraignment Thursday in a New York federal courtroom. The Department of Justice had previously charged him and a co-defendant, Somphop Singhasiri, with weapons and narcotics trafficking offenses. The DOJ had unsealed a complaint in April 2022 after authorities arrested them in Manhattan, N.Y. Both Ebisawa and Singhasiri pleaded not guilty to those accusations.

When were the nuclear materials charges added? In a new superseding indictment unsealed Wednesday, the Justice Department added the charges of trafficking nuclear materials. The indictment alleges that Ebisawa sought to sell the materials to Iran to assist its nuclear program.

Did Iran receive the materials? U.S. authorities seized the materials during a May 2022 search of an office connected with Ebisawa and his associates in Bangkok, according to the DOJ documents. Later, a laboratory analysis concluded that the uranium Ebisawa and his associates sought to sell to Iran was “weapons-grade.”

Did Ebisawa know it was weapons-grade? The indictment details an interaction between an undercover agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Ebisawa. The agent suggested that Iran didn’t need the materials for nuclear energy and that it likely wanted to use the materials for nuclear weapons, according to the document. Ebisawa allegedly replied, “I think so, I hope so.”

Dig deeper: Listen to Paul Butler’s conversation with Benham Ben Taleblu on The World and Everything in It podcast about an “unequal deal” between Iran and the United States.