Yakuza boss ‘tried to sell’ nuclear bomb samples to Iran
A JAPANESE yakuza crime boss has been charged with attempting to traffic nuclear materials for the construction of a bomb to Iran.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, is accused of showing samples of uranium and plutonium – transported from Myanmar to Thailand – to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent. The agent was posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker and claimed that he was in contact with an Iranian general.
Samples of the seized material were later found to contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, according to court documents.
Mr Ebisawa and co-defendant Somphop Singhasiri, a 61-year-old Thai, face charges of trafficking drugs, weapons and nuclear material. Mr Ebisawa is alleged by prosecutors to be the leader of a yakuza, a Japan-based network of underworld gangs.
Anne Milgram, a DEA administrator, said the allegations represented “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 that had been mining uranium in the country, according to prosecutors. Court documents alleged that Mr Ebisawa had proposed that the group’s leader sell uranium through him to fund a weapons purchase from the Iranian general.
According to prosecutors, the leader in Myanmar provided samples that a US federal laboratory found to have contained uranium, thorium and plutonium. The lab said “the isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons-grade, meaning enough of it would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.
Mr Ebisawa was among four people who were arrested in April 2022 in New York and had been charged with international narcotics trafficking and firearms offences. The new charges were contained in a superseding indictment.
US attorney Damian Williams accused Mr Ebisawa of “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”.
Matthew G Olsen, the assistant attorney general, said: “It is chilling to imagine the consequences had these efforts succeeded.”
The defendants were scheduled to appear in a New York court to respond to the charges yesterday.