Takeshi Ebisawa, leader of Japanese crime syndicate charged by the United State authorities with trafficking nuclear material has pleaded guilty in Manhattan.
According to the Department of Justice, the 60-year-old conspired with a network of associates to traffic nuclear materials, including uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, from Myanmar to other countries, as well as trafficking narcotics.
In February 2024, U.S. authorities charged the Japanese “yakuza” crime leader with conspiring to traffic nuclear materials from Myanmar for expected use by Iran in nuclear weapons, NBC reported.
He was also previously charged in 2022 with international narcotics trafficking and firearms offenses.
“As he admitted in federal court today, Takeshi Ebisawa brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma (Myanmar),” said Edward Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
“At the same time, he worked to send massive quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles to be used on battlefields in Burma and laundered what he believed to be drug money from New York to Tokyo.”
Ebisawa’s plot was detected and stopped through cooperation among authorities in the U.S., Indonesia, Japan and Thailand.