A former salesman for a manufacturer of laser welding machines was arrested on September 9 on charges that he conspired to evade U.S. export-control laws in order to sell his company's products to a division of the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom. Sam Bhambhani was charged in an indictment with working with a Russian citizen who resold laser equipment to the Russian government. It alleges they used falsified export documents to conceal the true end-user of the machines from the U.S. government. The indictment was filed in federal court in Boston. The equipment was sold from 2015 to 2021 to a subsidiary of Rosatom in Yekaterinburg, Russia, that produced components for nuclear munitions and various civilian goods, according to the indictment. A lawyer for Bhambhani did not respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.
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