Italy is investigating how a Russian businessman escaped from house arrest to avoid extradition to US on sanctions-breaking charges<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni acknowledged \u201canomalies\u201d in the handling of a Russian businessman who escaped from house arrest in Italy to avoid extradition to the United States and said on Saturday she would speak with the justice minister to understand what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Meloni termed the case of Artyom Uss \u201cgrave\u201d and vowed to get to the bottom of it when she returned to Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uss, the 40-year-old son of a Russian regional governor, was detained in October 2022 at Milan Malpensa Airport on a US warrant accusing him of violating sanctions. In November, a ruling from a Milan appeals court resulted in him being moved from jail to house arrest and outfitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He escaped from Italy on March 22, a day after a Milan court recognised as legitimate the US extradition request, and surfaced in Russia earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor sure there are anomalies,\u201d Meloni told reporters in Ethiopia. \u201cThe principal anomaly, I\u2019m sorry to say, is the decision of the appeals court to offer him house arrest with a frankly debatable motivation, and to then maintain that decision even after there was an extradition request. Because obviously in that case, the flight risk becomes more obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She welcomed the decision by Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio to undertake a disciplinary investigation, saying \u201cwe have to have clarity.\u201d But she also said Italy didn\u2019t have detailed intelligence information from the US Justice Department \u201cabout the nature of the person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica reported Saturday that US authorities made clear that the Russian presented a \u201cvery high flight risk\u201d in two notes to Nordio\u2019s office \u2014 one from October 19, two days after Uss\u2019 arrest, and the other sent after he was granted house arrest on November 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italy is investigating how a Russian businessman escaped from house arrest to avoid extradition to US on sanctions-breaking charges Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni acknowledged \u201canomalies\u201d in the handling of a Russian businessman who escaped from house arrest in Italy to avoid extradition to the United States and said on Saturday she would speak with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}