Who are the Yakuza and what is going on in U.S. nuclear trafficking case?

A Yakuza boss allegedly tried to sell nuclear material to an Iranian general in exchange for weapons for a Burmese insurgent leader, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

A member of the notorious Yakuza crime syndicate allegedly tried to sell nuclear materials to undercover agents posing as an arms dealer and an Iranian general in exchange for weapons for a rebel leader in Myanmar, U.S. authorities say.

“It is impossible to overstate the seriousness of the conduct alleged in today’s indictment,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in an indictment announced Wednesday that has made headlines around the world.

Court documents allege Takeshi Ebisawa, a leader of the Japanese criminal organization, tried to sell enriched uranium and plutonium in exchange for thousands of assault rifles, 50 rocket-propelled grenades and 20 surface-to-air missiles, among other arms, for an unnamed “leader of an ethnic insurgent group in Burma.”

He allegedly offered 50 metric tonnes of uranium and another substance used to make atomic weapons for more than $9 million, later offering plutonium, which he said would be “better” and “more powerful.”

The indictment indicates he thought he was speaking to a weapons and narcotics dealer who knew an Iranian general seeking to secure the tightly controlled material for Iran’s nuclear program.

He was actually speaking to an undercover U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent.

The indictment states that, beginning in early 2020, Ebisawa told the DEA agent and later the “general” (also an undercover agent) he had nuclear material to sell.

It says he sent them photos depicting “rocky substances with Geiger counters measuring radiation” as well as lab reports showing the material was radioactive, according to the document.