Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
12/18/2015
The former president of the U.S. branch of a Russian nuclear company this week was sentenced to 48 months in prison for helping arrange over $2 million in “corrupt payments” meant to aid U.S. businesses in securing contracts with the Russian state-owned nuclear energy corporation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced. Vadim Mikerin, 56, of Chevy Chase, Md., was president of TENAM Corp., a subsidiary of TENEX, a provider of Russian uranium and uranium enrichment services and a branch of Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear corporation.
Mikerin and two others conspired to send $2.1 million “from Maryland and elsewhere in the United States to offshore shell company bank accounts located in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland” in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the statement says. Using “consulting agreements and code words to disguise the corrupt payments” over the course of a decade, “conspirators agreed to make corrupt payments to influence Mikerin and to secure improper business advantages for U.S. companies that did business with TENEX,” according to the DOJ.
In addition to his prison term, Mikerin was ordered to forfeit $2.1 million. His co-conspirators, Daren Condrey and Boris Rubizhevsky, both pleaded guilty in the case in June and await sentencing.
TENAM previously said that following an independent investigation, TENEX “did not find any other TENEX, TENAM or Rosatom-group employees or officials involved in this matter,” and that the three entities “will continue to ensure that our business operations adhere to the highest standards of integrity and transparency.”
