(Bloomberg) -- The Justice Department accused seven people of evading US sanctions as part of a purported plot to sell Venezuelan oil to Russia and China and use the proceeds to buy black market chips for Russia to install in high-tech weapons on the battlefields in Ukraine.

The five Russians and two Venezuelans, “knowingly sought to conceal the theft of US military technology and profit off black market oil,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael Driscoll said in announcing the charges in New York on Wednesday. 

“This network schemed to procure sophisticated technology in direct support of a floundering Russian Federation military industrial complex,” Driscoll said.

One of those accused, Yury Orekhov, was arrested in Germany, while a suspect identified as Artem Uss was detained in Italy. Both face extradition to the US. The whereabouts of the other five suspects was not immediately clear.

The charges include conspiracy to defraud the US, bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. 

At the same time, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Orekhov and two of his companies over the allegations.

The semiconductors and microprocessors the network sent to Russia are used in fighter planes, ballistic and hypersonic missiles, smart munitions, radars and satellites, US officials said. 

The kind of components Orekhov and others procured are used in Russian weapons that have been deployed in Ukraine, according to the officials. The US has heightened enforcement of export controls on these items as part of its efforts to deny President Vladimir Putin the money and materiel necessary to continue the invasion.

“These efforts are having a direct effect on the battlefield, as Russia’s desperation has led them to turn to inferior suppliers and outdated equipment,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.

According to the government, Orekhov and Uss used front companies to smuggle hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from Venezuela to Russia and China. One such purchaser was a Russian aluminum company “controlled by a sanctioned oligarch and the world’s largest oil refining, gas and petrochemical conglomerate based in Beijing,” the US said, without identifying them.

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