Kansas Businessman Pleads Guilty to Illegally Exporting to Russia
A Kansas business owner pleaded guilty Dec. 19 for his part in a scheme to violate U.S. export laws by filing false export forms and shipping "sophisticated and controlled" avionics equipment to Russian customers without export licenses, DOJ announced. Cyril Buyanovsky, owner of KanRus Trading Co. also agreed to forfeit over $450,000 worth of avionics equipment along with a $50,000 personal forfeiture. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.
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Buyanovsky admitted to conspiring with others between 2020 and March to export U.S.-origin avionics equipment to Russian end users in Russia and other nations by filing false export forms and failing to file the required forms with the U.S. government. He and his co-conspirators lied about the true value of the goods, end users and end destinations, DOJ said.
On at least one occasion in 2021, Buyanovsky and a co-conspirator removed a sticker belonging to Russia’s Federal Security Service from a traffic alert and collision avoidance system before sending it to a U.S. company for repairs. DOJ said he then reattached the sticker before shipping the device back to the FSB.
The agency said Buyanovsky continued to illegally export equipment to Russia even after the U.S. introduced a host of new sanctions and export controls against the country for its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Buyanovsky was arrested in March one day after CBP seized a pallet of avionics devices he was trying to export to Russia.
DOJ said Buyanovsky took "numerous steps to hide" this activity from U.S. law enforcement, including by "lying” to U.S. suppliers about the intended end users of goods and shipping goods through intermediary companies in Armenia, the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus. He also continued to file false export forms with the U.S. government and used bank accounts in Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Cyprus and the UAE to funnel money from the Russian sales to KanRus in the U.S.
Buyanovsky’s guilty plea came about two weeks after BIS added a host of companies to the Entity List for violating export controls by illegally sending controlled items to Russia (see 2312050046). DOJ said “many” of those companies were involved in Buyanovsky’s scheme.