An Olathe business owner has pleaded guilty in federal court to charges related to the sale of sophisticated and controlled avionics equipment to customers in Russia without the required licenses from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas reported that 56-year-old Douglas Robertson admitted his role in a long conspiracy to circumvent U.S. export laws.   Robertson is the former vice president of KanRus Trading Company Inc.

Federal prosecutors said Robertson admitted that between 2020 and when he was arrested in March 2023, he conspired with others – including co-defendants 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. In these forms, Robertson and his conspirators lied about the exports’ value, end users, and end destinations.

Robertson faces a statutory maximum penalty of five years in prison for the conspiracy count, 20 years in prison for each of the two Export Control Reform Act counts, and 20 years in prison for the money laundering count. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for October 3rd.   The case was investigated by the FBI and the Department of Commerce’s Office of Export Enforcement.