Georgia arrests man over attempted $700,000 uranium sale
The Georgian citizen faces up to 10 years in prison after agents said he tried to sell uranium-238 and handled nuclear material illegally.
- On Oct 7, Georgia's national security service detained a man in TBILISI attempting to sell Uranium-238 to a foreign national for $700,000, the agency said on Wednesday.
- The suspect faces up to 10 years in prison for illegally handling nuclear material; security agents arrested him after testing two containers from his vehicle with a handheld radiation detector.
- Georgia has experienced several serious incidents involving illicit trade of nuclear materials in recent decades, a concern dating to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, of which Georgia was part.
- Earlier this year, authorities detained two people who attempted to purchase $3 million worth of uranium and a cache of a radioactive isotope found in nuclear weapons testing programs.
- While Uranium-238 is radioactive, it is the most common uranium isotope and is not ordinarily usable on its own to make a nuclear bomb, though handling remains a serious offense.
27 Articles
27 Articles
A Georgian man was arrested after trying to sell $700,000 worth of uranium to a foreign national in his home country, the country’s national security service said. The Georgian citizen faces up to 10 years in prison for illegally trafficking nuclear material, the statement said, which was accompanied by video footage showing armed security forces pulling a man out of a white passenger car and handcuffing him to the ground. The man or his legal r…
Man charged with illegal trafficking of nuclear material
The State Security Service of Georgia arrested a citizen of the Caucasian nation this Wednesday during the attempt to sell a certain amount of money to a foreign...
The State Security Service of Georgia (SGS) reported on Wednesday that it had stopped an attempt to illegally sell the radioactive substance "Uran 238" to a foreign citizen." As a result of a joint operation, officers of the counterintelligence and operational divisions of the State Security Service of Georgia detained a Georgian citizen for the illegal handling of nuclear materials, in particular the radioactive substance "uran".
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