Takeshi Ebisawa faces a maximum sentence of life in prison after pleading guilty to six charges in a Manhattan court.
A Japanese crime boss has pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell nuclear materials from Myanmar to Iran, as well as drug trafficking and weapons offenses, authorities in the United States said.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, a Yakuza member, entered a guilty plea to six counts in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 9.
According to prosecutors, in 2020, Ebisawa told an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and a DEA source that he had cleared a large amount of thorium and uranium that he planned to sell.
In response to Ebisawa’s repeated requests, the undercover agent agreed to help Ebisawa broker the sale of the nuclear materials to an associate posing as an Iranian general, prosecutors said.
Ebisawa then offered to supply the undercover agent with plutonium, which is even “better” and “more powerful” than uranium for making nuclear weapons, prosecutors said.
A powdery yellow substance that Ebisawa’s co-conspirators showed to undercover agents later contained detectable amounts of uranium, thorium and plutonium in a laboratory analysis, the Justice Department said.
According to prosecutors, Ebisawa also brokered the purchase of U.S.-made surface-to-air missiles and heavy weapons to arm several ethnic armed groups in Myanmar, and accepted large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine as partial payment for the weapons.
U.S. officials said they carried out Ebisawa’s arrest and prosecution in collaboration with law enforcement partners in Indonesia, Japan and Thailand.
“Today’s appeal should serve as a stark reminder to those who endanger our national security by trafficking weapons-grade plutonium and other dangerous materials on behalf of organized crime syndicates that the Department of Justice will hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” the deputy attorney general said Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Ebisawa, who was previously charged with international drug trafficking and firearms offenses in 2022, faces a possible life sentence on the most serious charge.
