The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that the leader of a Japanese criminal organization known as the “Yakuza,” who had been accused by U.S. authorities of smuggling nuclear materials to Iran, has pleaded guilty.
According to a Justice Department statement released on Thursday, January 9, Takeshi Ebisawa, a 60-year-old Yakuza leader, pleaded guilty in a Manhattan court to conspiring to smuggle nuclear materials from Myanmar to countries including Iran. He admitted to working with a network of criminals to traffic uranium and weapons-grade plutonium suitable for nuclear weapons.
The statement also notes that Takeshi Ebisawa has admitted to international drug and arms trafficking charges.
In February 2024, U.S. officials charged the Yakuza leader with conspiring to smuggle nuclear materials from Myanmar to Iran for use in nuclear weapons.
He had also been charged in 2022 with international drug trafficking and firearms-related crimes.
Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim for the Southern District of New York stated:
“As he admitted in federal court today, Takeshi Ebisawa brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma.”
“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. He also laundered what he believed to be drug money from New York to Tokyo. It is thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the DEA’s Special Operations Division, the career national security prosecutors of this Office, and the cooperation of our law enforcement partners in Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand, that Ebisawa’s plot was detected and stopped.”
Ebisawa’s plot was uncovered and thwarted through cooperation between authorities in the United States, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand.
