Moldova, US foil traffic in nuclear material

(Vatican Radio) Moldova’s Interior Ministry says the Moldovan authorities have helped the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the last five years to thwart potential smuggling of nuclear and radioactive material on several occasions. The announcement underscores international concerns that poorer Eastern European nations such as Moldova have become a major hub for trading nuclear materials with Islamic militants. 

Officials involved in the investigation said the cases in the former Soviet republic of Moldova involved sting operations. Investigators explained that they uncovered at least four attempts in five years in which criminal networks with suspected Russian ties sought to sell radioactive material to extremists through Moldova. One operation uncovered an attempt to sell bomb-grade uranium to a real buyer from the Middle East, the first known case of its kind.

Wiretaps and interviews with investigators showed a middleman for the gang repeatedly ranted with hatred for America as he focused on smuggling the essential material for an atomic bomb and blueprints for a dirty bomb to a Middle Eastern buyer. In wiretaps, videotaped arrests, photographs of bomb-grade material, documents and interviews, reporters found that smugglers are explicitly targeting buyers who are enemies of the West.

Investigators said that over the pulsating beat at an exclusive nightclub, an arms smuggler even offered to deliver enough radioactive material to contaminate several city blocks, a so-called dirty bomb. The price: 2.5 million euros. Andrew Bieniawski of the Nuclear Threat Initiative group is concerned about these developments. “Highly enriched uranium is of particular concern, because if terrorists require [that], they will have essentially overcome one of the most difficult obstacles on the pathway to make what we call an improvised nuclear devise or IND,” he said.

It also represent the fulfillment of a long-feared scenario in which organized crime gangs are trying to link up with groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida - both of which have made clear their ambition to use weapons of mass destruction. While several suspects have been detained in the partnership between the FBI and a small group of Moldovan investigators, jail terms have been short and key suspects remain at large. However high-ranking Moldovan police official Gheorghe Cavcaliuc says Moldova takes the threat seriously. “Here the head of the criminal group has been sentenced and jailed. “Until we know for sure where the substances seized in Europe came from and where they were going to, only than we will be able to say for sure that the danger is no longer present.”

Moldova is among several former Soviet states and Soviet satellites where critics say nuclear materials are often worse protected than potatoes amid rampant corruption.