Report: In Moldova, smugglers tried to sell nuclear materials to terrorists

In Moldova, criminal networks have made at least four attempts over the past five years to sell radioactive material, including bomb-grade uranium, The Associated Press reports.

During its investigation, AP found that while many middlemen have been arrested, their bosses have all escaped. A small group of Moldovan investigators trained by the U.S. government to break up the nuclear black market worked on the cases, including Constantin Malic. Malic told AP that in 2010, authorities were able to get a sawed-off piece of a depleted uranium cylinder that they believe may have been from Chernobyl (it ended up not being highly toxic). "We can expect more of these cases," he said. "As long as the smugglers think they can make big money without being caught, they will keep doing it."

In one case, a former KGB informant named Teodor Chetrus called one of Malic's sources, and said he was looking for a Middle Eastern buyer to purchase uranium. He was a middleman who hated the West, Malic said, and proclaimed "multiple times that this substance must have a real buyer from the Islamic states to make a dirty bomb." The informant made a deal to sell the bomb-grade uranium to a "buyer in the Middle East," AP says, but Chetrus wanted to ensure he was not an undercover agent. His boss was a man named Alexandr Agheenco, who lived in the Moldovan breakaway republic of Trans-Dniester. Agheenco decided not to sell the uranium all at once, instead dispensing 10-gram samples for €320,000 ($360,000) a pop. Agheenco gave his wife, Galina, the job of arranging a handoff of the uranium to Chetrus in Moldova. Police were waiting, and arrested Chetrus and Galina Agheenco after Chetrus took the uranium package she left in her Lexus; a Trans-Dniester police officer who smuggled the uranium to Galina Agheenco escaped and, along with Agheenco, was untouchable in Trans-Dniester.

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Tests found that the uranium was high-grade material that could be used in a nuclear bomb, and when Malic searched Chetrus' house, he found plans for a dirty bomb and evidence that Chetrus was working on a separate deal with an actual buyer (this deal with a Sudanese doctor was later broken up by a sting operation). Galina Agheenco received a sentence of three years in prison because she had a young son, and Chetrus was sentenced to five years; Galina Agheenco's sentence is up, and Chetrus was released early in December 2014.