In this May 27, 2015 photo, former Moldovan police investigator Constantin Malic pauses during an interview in Chisinau, Moldova. In 2009, Malic was a 27-year-old police officer when he first stumbled upon the nuclear black market. He was working on a fraud unit in the Moldovan capital, and had an informant helping police take down a euro counterfeiting ring stretching from the Black Sea to Naples, Italy. The informant, a businessman in his fifties, casually mentioned to Malic that over the years, contacts had periodically offered him radioactive material. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists, The Associated Press has learned. The latest known case came in February this year, when a smuggler offered a huge cache of deadly cesium — enough to contaminate several city blocks — and specifically sought a buyer from the Islamic State group.
Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB's successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished country of Moldova, investigators say. The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, AP found.
