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A Bosnian man helped a Russian businessman wanted by the United States on smuggling charges escape house arrest in Italy last spring, U.S. officials charged, a stunning escape that embarrassed Italian officials and infuriated Washington.
The charges against Vladimir Jovancic, 52 — handed down by a U.S. grand jury in October — were unsealed on December 4, days after Jovancic was arrested by Croatian authorities. U.S. prosecutors said they would seek his extradition.
Separately, Italian prosecutors announced they had identified six people who also helped in Artyom Uss’s escape — including a Bosnian-Italian man and four foreign nationals living abroad.
The prosecutors said on December 5 they had executed arrest warrants in Brescia in northern Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia, where one of the suspects was taken into custody.
Uss, 40, was charged by U.S. officials last year with running an elaborate yearslong smuggling scheme that brought sensitive military technology to Russia, as well as allegedly smuggling Venezuelan oil in violation of U.S. sanctions.
U.S. officials alleged that Uss and another Russian, Yury Orekhov, used a German company called Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau as a front company to acquire sensitive military and dual-use technologies from U.S. manufacturers. Items included advanced semiconductors and microprocessors used in fighter aircraft, missile systems, radar, satellites, and other space-based military applications, the Justice Department said.
Some of the chips have turned up in Russian military equipment found on the battlefield in Ukraine, officials said.
The German company was also used as a front to smuggle hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from Venezuela to Russian and Chinese purchasers, U.S. officials said.
Uss was arrested by Italian police at Milan’s airport on October 17, 2022, as he prepared to board a flight to Istanbul. Orekhov was arrested by German police.
About a month later, a Milan court ordered that Uss be moved from jail to house arrest, a move that U.S. officials warned was potentially dangerous due to Uss’s family.
Uss’s father, Aleksandr Uss, is a wealthy businessman with ties to Igor Sechin, the powerful, Kremlin-connected CEO of the state oil giant Rosneft who is widely believed to have worked for Soviet intelligence agencies in the 1980s. Aleksandr Uss also served as governor of the sprawling, mineral-rich Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk until earlier this year.
Artyom Uss was allowed to serve his house arrest in a villa in an upscale suburb south of Milan, where he was allowed Internet access and visitors and was required to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet. Italian police also checked in on him regularly.
On March 22, a court approved the U.S. extradition request. The following day, according to U.S. officials, Uss fled house arrest with the help of Jovancic and other identified people who “escorted Uss into a car and provided Uss with bolt cutters, which Uss used to remove his electronic ankle monitor and throw it out the window.”
Uss was then driven into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, before crossing into Serbia, where he later flew to Moscow, according to the indictment.
Jovancic, who was allegedly paid 50,000 euros for his services by Uss’s wife, had posed as a grocery delivery man to slip past guards.
Uss told Russian media in April that he was back in Russia.
“I am in Russia! In these past few particularly dramatic days, I had strong and reliable people by my side,” he was quoted as saying by the state news agency RIA Novosti on April 4.
“The Italian court, whose impartiality I initially counted on, demonstrated its obvious political bias. Unfortunately, it is ready to buckle under the pressure of U.S. authorities.”
At a news conference in Milan on December 6, Italian prosecutors provided more details of Uss’s escape, and identified four other alleged accomplices. Italian media said the names were Jovancic’s son, Boris; a Slovenian man named Matej Janezic; and two Serbian men, Srdjan Lolic and Nebojsa Illic.
The Milan prosecutor’s office could not be immediately reached for further comment.
Uss’s escape prompted outrage from U.S. authorities and among some Italian officials, as well, who questioned why a person known for a high risk of flight would be allowed house arrest.
“The case is quite serious,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgina Meloni said in April when she was questioned by reporters about the escape. “There are certainly anomalies. I think the main anomaly is the (court’s decision) to keep him under house arrest with questionable reasons and to maintain the decision even when there was a decision on extradition.”
On December 5, the day after the indictment against Jovancic was unsealed, the U.S. State Department announced a $7 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Uss.
The circumstances behind Jovancic’s arrest in Croatia were also unclear. Croatian authorities have not commented on the case.
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