The Adamov Affair

Yevgeny Adamov, former head of the the Russian atomic energy agency, whose policies provoked a huge quantity of grievance filings by Russian ecologists, was arrested in 2005 in Bern, because of a warrant issued by the United States. American law enforcement bodies accused Adamov (along with U.S. citizen Mark Kaushansky) of misappropriation of $9 billion (which had been allocated to Russia for programs to increase nuclear security), of money laundering and tax evasion.

American intelligence officials alleged that Adamov transferred money received from the U.S. to his private company accounts in the U.S., and from there he transferred it to Russia and other countries.

On June 26, 2005, Switzerland received an official request for Adamov’s extradition to the U.S., where the former minister was threatened with 60 years in prison and a huge fine.

Immediately after Adamov was arrested, a criminal case was brought against him in Russia, for exceeding his authority while in government. After a long competition for Adamov between Russian and American law enforcement bodies, Switzerland came down on the side of returning the ex-minister to his homeland. Throughout this period, high-ranking Russian officials and Duma deputies said that Adamov should be returned to Russia because, if he were sent to an American prison, he might be turned by U.S. intelligence and give up important state secrets.

Today, Yevgeny Adamov is sitting in a special wing of Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison. According to experts, he is living in excellent conditions, surpassing even those of the “luxurious Swiss prisons.”

“I think that this entire story was concocted so that Yevgeny Adamov would not fall into the arms of the American system of justice and would be returned to the Motherland,” said Green Cross’ Vladimir Kuznetsov. “Really, there is nothing here to threaten him. Look, even Pavel Borodin, after his [2001] arrest in the U.S., was given back to Russia, and now he occupies a top government post” [Secretary of State for the Union of Russia and Belarus].