Vadim Mikerin, 56, a former director of the Pan American Department of JSC Techsnabexport, a subsidiary of Rosatom's State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with his role arranging over $2 million in corrupt payoffs meant to influence contract awarding, the FBI said.
Mikerin currently resides in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He pleaded guilty in a federal court in that state, the FBI said in a Monday release.
Mikerin was a director for TENEX, a Rosatom subsidiary, and president of TENAM Corporation, which is a subsidiary of TENEX.
Mikerin, with at least two others who pleaded guilty in June, conspired to transmit funds from Maryland and elsewhere in the United States to offshore shell company bank accounts located in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland.
Mikerin admitted the funds were transmitted with the intent to promote a corrupt payment scheme that violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Specifically, he admitted that the corrupt payments were made by conspirators to secure improper business advantages for U.S. companies that did business with TENEX.
The FBI said Mikerin admitted that he and others used code words such as “lucky figure,” “LF,” “cake” and “remuneration” to disguise the corrupt payments.
Fellow conspirators Daren Condrey, 50, of Glenwood, Maryland, and Boris Rubizhevsky, 64, of Closter, New Jersey, pleaded guilty in June to their parts in the conspiracy.
The FBI said Mikerin conspired with Condrey, Rubizhevsky and others to transfer approximately $2,126,622 from the United States to offshore shell company bank accounts. As part of his plea agreement, Mikerin has agreed to the entry of a forfeiture money judgment in that amount.
The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Christopher Cestaro, Ephraim Wernick and Derek Ettinger of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys David I. Salem and Michael T. Packard of the District of Maryland.