Virginia company charged for illegally exporting million-dollar technology to Russia

A Virginia company has been charged for illegally exporting million-dollar technology to Russia and gaining from the proceeds.

The company in the Eastern District Court of Virginia’s crosshairs is Eleview International Inc., which the regulatory agency is investigating for conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act.

Alongside the company, two executives, Oleg Nayandin, 54, of Fairfax, Virginia, and Vitaliy Borisenko, 39, of Vienna, Virginia, also appeared at the now unsealed complaint. If found guilty of the charges laid against them, Nayandin and Borisenko face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Homeland Security Investigations and the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) are investigating the case.

“We must not allow critical systems and technologies to be transferred to anyone who may use them against America and our global partners,” said U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber for the Eastern District of Virginia. “Guarding against these transfers is imperative, and violations of the laws that protect our national security will be met with ardent prosecution.”

Virginia company and executives charged

The Justice Department report stated that between March 2022 and June 2023, Eleview International Inc. (Eleview), was allegedly operating as a Virginia-based company that carried out freight consolidation and worked as an international forwarding business.

Oleg Nayandin served in multiple roles as the owner, president, and CEO of Eleview. Vitaly Borisenko oversaw the day-to-day operations of Eleview’s freight forwarding business.

It is alleged that they “conspired to illegally export goods and technology from the United States to Russia by transshipping them through three countries bordering or near Russia.” The company carried out three international schemes within Russia or in countries directly bordering Russia’s landmass, such as Turkey, Finland, and Kazakhstan.

Nayandin Borisenk also ran an e-commerce website that reportedly allowed “Russian customers to order U.S. goods and technology directly from U.S. retailers, who shipped the items to Eleview’s warehouse in Chantilly, Virginia. The defendants then consolidated the packages before shipping them to the Russian customers, often using other freight forwarders as intermediaries, in exchange for a fee.”

Eleview International Inc. lied to the Department of Commerce, which had imposed more rigid restrictions on exports to Russia in the wake of the Ukraine war. The company used Turkey, Finland, and Kazakhstan as entry routes to Russia, falsifying statements and documents submitted to the Department of Commerce.

For example, in Turkey, the defendants allegedly exported about $1.48 million of telecommunications equipment to a false end-user, knowing that the equipment was intended for a Russian telecommunications company that supplied the Russian government, including the Federal Security Service, or FSB.” It is also alleged that these components and telecommunications equipment were deployed in the war effort against Ukraine.

“This company allegedly used not one, not two, but three different schemes to illegally transship sensitive American technology to Russia,” said Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew S. Axelrod of the Department of Commerce.”

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