A man who federal prosecutors say runs a notorious Japanese organized crime syndicate pleaded guilty last week to conspiring to traffic nuclear materials to Iran and US weapons left behind in Afghanistan to Burma.
Takeshi Ebisawa, the 60-year-old alleged leader of the Japanese Yakuza, pleaded guilty in Federal Court in Manhattan on Wednesday for conspiring with a network of associates to traffic nuclear materials, including weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, from Burma to other countries. He also pleaded guilty to international narcotics and arms trafficking, the Justice Department said.
Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim for the Southern District of New York said Ebisawa admitted to “brazenly trafficking in nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, from Burma” while at the same time working to “ship massive quantities heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy weapons such as surface-to-air missiles to be used on the battlefields of Burma and laundered what which is believed to be drug money from New York to Tokyo.”
Takeshi Ebisawa pleaded guilty to an international criminal operation. (Southern District of New York)
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had been investigating Ebisawa since at least 2019, according to court documents and evidence presented in court.
During the investigation, federal prosecutors say Ebisawa unwittingly introduced an undercover DEA agent posing as a narcotics and arms dealer to his international network of criminal associates, which stretched across Japan, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and the United States, among other places, ” for the purpose of arranging large transactions with narcotics and weapons”.
The superseding indictment alleges that Ebisawa and his network, including his co-defendants, arranged multiple narcotics and weapons transactions with the undercover agent.
Ebisawa conspired to broker the purchase of US-made surface-to-air missiles, as well as other heavy weapons, for “multiple ethnic armed groups in Burma,” including an unidentified leader of an “ethnic insurgent group,” according to the federal prosecutors. He also allegedly negotiated the acceptance of large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine for distribution as part payment for the weapons.
“Ebisawa understood that the weapons were manufactured in the US and where they were taken from American military bases in Afghanistan“, the DOJ said. “Ebisawa planned for heroin and methamphetamine to be distributed in the New York market.”
In a separate transaction, he also allegedly conspired to sell 500 kilograms of methamphetamine and 500 kilograms of heroin to an undercover distribution agent in New York, prosecutors say.
Ebisawa is also accused of working to launder $100,000 in alleged narcotics proceeds from the US to Japan.
In early 2020, court documents say Ebisawa informed an undercover agent and a confidential DEA source that he had access to a large amount of nuclear material he wanted to sell.
Later that year, Ebisawa allegedly sent an undercover agent a series of photographs “showing rocky material with Geiger counters measuring radiation,” as well as purported laboratory analyzes indicating the presence of thorium and uranium, court documents said. At Ebisawa’s urging, the undercover agent agreed to help him broker the sale of his nuclear materials to an associate posing as an Iranian general for use in the nuclear weapons program, according to the Justice Department.
Prosecutors say Ebisawa then offered to supply the alleged Iranian general with “plutonium” that would be even “better” and “more powerful” than uranium for that purpose.
With two other co-conspirators, Ebisawa allegedly suggested to an undercover agent that the leader of a Burmese rebel group sell uranium to an alleged Iranian general, through Ebisawa, to finance the group’s weapons purchases.
In a video call on February 4, 2022, one of Ebisawa’s co-conspirators allegedly told an undercover DEA agent and the leader of a rebel group in Burma that he had more than 2,000 kilograms of thorium-232 and more than 100 kilograms of uranium at his disposal in the compound U3O8 – a compound of uranium that it is usually found in powdered uranium concentrate known as “yellow cake,” court documents state.
Nuclear samples described as “yellowcake” were seized with the help of Thai authorities. (Southern District of New York)
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He reportedly claimed that he could produce as much as five tons of nuclear material in Burma. They had several meetings in Southeast Asia to discuss their ongoing transactions, prosecutors say.
During one of these meetings, one of Ebisawa’s co-conspirators showed an undercover agent in a hotel room in Thailand two plastic containers, each containing a powdery yellow substance that he described as “yellowcake” nuclear samples.
He allegedly said that in one tank there was a sample of uranium in the compound U3O8, and in the other tank there was thorium-232.
The samples were seized with the help of Thai authorities and then transferred to the custody of US law enforcement.
The DOJ said a nuclear forensics laboratory in the US tested the samples and determined that both samples contained measurable amounts of uranium, thorium and plutonium. “Specifically, the lab determined that the plutonium isotope composition found in the nuclear samples was weapons-grade, meaning that plutonium, if produced in sufficient quantities, would be suitable for use in nuclear weapons,” prosecutors added.
The superseded indictment included photographs of the seized nuclear samples. (Southern District of New York)
Ebisawa has been in jail in Brooklyn since his April 2022 arrest during a DEA operation that resulted in international drug and gun charges. An extraordinary indictment was brought against him last February.
On Wednesday, Ebisawa pleaded guilty to six counts. The two counts of conspiracy to import narcotics carry a mandatory sentence of at least 10 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison. Other charges he pleaded guilty to include conspiracy to commit international smuggling of nuclear materials, international trafficking in nuclear materials, conspiracy to possess firearms, including machine guns and explosive devices, and money laundering.
Ebisawa’s guilty plea “should serve as a strong reminder to those who threaten our national security by smuggling 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,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of Department of National Security Department of Justice said in a statement.
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DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said the investigation into Ebisawa and his associates “exposed the shocking depths of international organized crime from nuclear trafficking to narcotics facilitation and the arming of violent insurgents.”
