By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The United States is seeking the extradition of a man from Bosnia and Herzegovina who it says helped the indicted son of a Russian governor close to President Vladimir Putin escape house arrest in Italy earlier this year.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Vladimir Jovancic was taken into custody in Croatia on U.S. charges of helping Artem Uss flee Italy to Russia ahead of his looming extradition to the United States. Uss was charged in 2022 with shipping military technologies bought from U.S. manufacturers to Russian buyers.
In a Dec. 4 letter to U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner, the prosecutors asked that Jovancic be detained pending trial once he arrives in the United States following extradition proceedings in Croatia.
The Oct. 20, 2022 charges against Uss, which also accused him of shipping Venezuelan oil to Russian and Chinese buyers in breach of U.S. sanctions, came as the U.S. sought to crack down on violations of sanctions and export controls to pressure Putin to halt Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Separately on Tuesday, the U.S. State Department said it was offering a $7 million reward for information leading to Uss’ arrest.
Uss’ father, Alexander Uss, resigned in April as governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region shortly after his son returned to Russia.
Prosecutors said Artem Uss and his wife paid Jovancic 50,000 euros ($54,110) to transport Uss from his Milan residence across the border to Slovenia and ultimately to Serbia, where he boarded a plane to Moscow.
Jovancic, described by prosecutors as an affiliate of a Serbian organized crime group, faces two counts of obstruction of justice and instigating or assisting escape.
($1 = 0.9240 euro)
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Rami Ayyub in Washington; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
