KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An Olathe, Kansas man has pleaded guilty for his role of illegally exporting aviation-related technology to Russia after the country invaded Ukraine.
Douglas Edward Robertson, 56, the former vice president of KanRus Trading Company Inc., pleaded guilty Tuesday for his role in a years-long conspiracy to circumvent U.S. export laws by filing false export forms with the U.S. government and, after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, continuing to sell and export sophisticated and controlled avionics equipment to customers in Russia without the required licenses from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
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According to court documents, as part of his guilty plea, Robertson admitted that between 2020 and when he was arrested in March 2023, he conspired with others – including Cyril Gregory Buyanovsky of Lawrence, Kansas , and Oleg Chistyakov, aka Olegs Čitsjakovs, of Riga, Latvia, – to smuggle U.S.-origin avionics equipment to end users in Russia, as well as Russian end users in other foreign countries by, among other actions, knowingly filing false export forms and failing to file required export forms with the U.S. government.