A Bulgarian national was extradited from Greece to the United States and made his first court appearance in San Antonio yesterday, facing allegations of smuggling sensitive U.S.-origin microelectronics to Russia.

50-year-old Milan Dimitrov, implicated in this international scheme alongside Ilias Sabirov, a 52-year-old Russian, and Dimitar Dimitrov, 74, of Bulgaria; the trio is accused of flouting the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA), according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Texas, their operation involved using a Bulgarian firm to transship radiation-hardened integrated circuits to Russia while bypassing necessary U.S. export licenses.

Milan Dimitrov now faces two counts of IEEPA violations, a single count of money laundering, and one count of making false statements to the Department of Commerce, each offense could lead to a maximum 20-year prison term; his charge comes two years after Sabirov and Dimitar Dimitrov were indicted with similar counts but both remain at large.

From at least May 2014 to May 2018, the defendants allegedly used Multi Technology Integration Group EEOD (MTIG), a Bulgarian company, to obtain export-controlled items from the United States to later surreptitiously reroute them to Russia—a complex process that commenced with a reportedly failed attempt to directly acquire radiation-resistant circuits from a supplier in Austin, an event which led to Sabirov setting up MTIG in Bulgaria to skirt U.S. restrictions, as per court documents.

In 2018, when an Export Control Officer from the Department of Commerce interviewed Milan Dimitrov as part of a check-up visit to MTIG, Dimitrov allegedly made false claims, denying the redirected shipment of the components to Russia, U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza of the Western District of Texas announced the legal developments in the case with the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement, FBI, and Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) spearheading the ongoing investigation.