Putin’s “Nuke Surprise” and the American CEO That’s Enabling Him
Edlow International CEO Walks Sanctions/Moral Tightrope While Making Millions Facilitating Russian Nuclear/Radiological Shipments
This article was updated on May 14, 2023
American nuclear/radiological materials shipping company CEO Jack Edlow is one or two heartbeats away from Vladimir Putin through Putin’s closest Kremlin lieutenants and the richest of his Russian oligarchs. These relationships run through a combination of sanctioned and unsanctioned Russian individuals and entities in the Kremlin and in state and privately-owned entities that are involved in (1) Prosecuting the Ukraine war, (2) Administering occupied territories in Ukraine; (3) Carrying out the Russian disinformation and election interference campaigns against America, (4) The Russian state-owned nuclear/radiological materials production monopoly Rosatom, and (5), supplying Iran.
In an exclusive RussiLeaks interview regarding his Russian subsidiary Edlow East-West-Russia and its Russian General Manager Alexander Egorov, Mr. Edlow stated emphatically that he has no Russian customers, that he is doing nothing illegal, that Alexander Egorov is not an “oligarch”, and he threatened to terminate the interview before it started if I continued to characterize Egorov as such. He insisted that if sanctions were to be imposed on the Russian nuclear/radiological materials industry and its leaders he would discontinue his business there as a good American citizen. When challenged on where his personal moral redline was that if Russia were to cross it, would cause him to pull out voluntarily in the absence of sanctions, he refused to answer, saying he wasn’t going to engage in “hypotheticals.”
In this expose we shine a bright light on these relationships and how Mr. Edlow has to date been successfully threading the needle between illegality and immorality in the middle of Russia’s hot war with Ukraine, their on-going cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns against the US, and their exports/imports of weapons and WMD tech with Iran, without breaking a single US law to date.
First Up: Sergei Kiriyenko – Putin’s Sanctioned First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, “Viceroy of Donbas” and “Nuke Suprise”
First up and worst up is the Sergei Kiriyenko, the man in Putin’s innermost circle that puts Jack Edlow just one heartbeat away from Putin in his business relationships. Kiriyenko appointed Putin head of the FSB in 1998 when he was Prime Minister during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, catapulting Putin’s career. Kiriyenko now serves Putin directly as First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office in the Kremlin. Nicknamed “The Viceroy of Donbas” and “Nuke Surprise” in an article by France24 in February of 2022,” one of Kiriyenko’s Putin assignments is administering the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine which includes Russia’s seizure and occupation of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the Chernobyl site, and carrying out Russia’s sham referendums in the Donbas, Crimea, and Kherson.
Also nicknamed “Nuke Surprise,” Kiriyenko was named by Putin as Director of (state nuclear/radiological materials production monopoly) Rosatom (2005-2016), as well as Director of its subsidiary Atomenergoprom, which manages all civilian nuclear fuel production and facilities. Rosatom also owns Texnabexport (AKA TENEX), the Russian exporter of enriched uranium and a supplier of nuclear fuel cycle products. According to CNN (and verified by numerous other outlets), “Rosatom is a key exporter of nuclear fuel. In 2021, the United States relied on the Russian nuclear monopoly for 14% of the uranium that powered its nuclear reactors. European utilities bought almost a fifth of their nuclear fuel from Rosatom…the European Union has made little progress since (sic) weaning itself off Russia’s nuclear industry.”
Russian Rosatom WMD Tech to Iran…On to Terrorist Proxies…for Drones
In a December 2022 article published by The Robert Lansing Institute entitled “Rosatom Violates Non-Proliferation Treaty in Iran, they assessed that “it is highly possible that Rosatom has been assisting Iran in developing nuclear tech for some time in exchange for UAVs. This assistance comes in the form of consultations by Rosatom experts who visit Iran under the guise of servicing the Bushehr nuclear power plant. That way, Iran gains experience in nuclear materials and promotes (their) military nuclear program. This fact is likely to explain Tehran’s high rate of progress in uranium enrichment and making nuclear weapons.” Lansing included various Russian/Iranian documents, including Russian passports of these consultants, to back up their assessment.
In a recent RussiLeaks December 2022 article entitled Russian WMDs for Iranian Drones, we reported on how Russia had made a secret deal with Iran to trade hundreds of Iranian drones with which they’ve been bombing Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure, in return for Russian WMD technology.
Russia is shipping nuclear/radiological materials and technology to Iran, and Iran has sent Russia hundreds of drones that are killing Ukrainian civilians. Given past behavior in arming their terrorist proxies, Iran is likely planning to hand some quantity of these materials over to these proxies, on top of developing their own nuclear weapons. If the US government and the EU aren’t taking due notice, perhaps Israel and Mossad are paying attention. The Biden administration, which just signed the new National Security Memorandum NSM-19 on March 2nd, needs to do a fresh deep-dive on this Russian nuclear/radiological supply chain to Iran and their terrorist proxies.
Given Sergiy Kiriyenko’s history and current role, it is safe to say that Kiriyenko is Putin’s hatchet man on all things in Russia’s nuclear/radiological portfolio, from Russia’s nuclear fuel production and shipments worldwide – including to Iran- to the radioactive polonium poison Russia used in its assassination of Russian FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
Putin a Pedophile Accusation? Assassination by Radioactive Polonium Heavy Metal
Apparently, Alexander Litvinenko’s defection to the UK wasn’t, in and of itself, assassination-worthy for Putin. But in 2006, however, Litvinenko committed the cardinal sin of accusing Putin of being a pedophile after a video had surfaced showing Putin kissing a boy on his stomach on Kremlin grounds on 28 June 2006. Four months later? Death by radioactive polonium in London. Now, who would have been in charge of mining and weaponizing radioactive polonium in Russia and supplying it to the FSB in 2006? Yeah, that would’ve been Kiriyenko and Rosatom. Sergei Kiriyenko was first sanctioned by the US, the UK, and the EU in March of 2021 after the Novachok poisoning of Russian politician Alexei Navalny by a special assassination unit in the FSB.
Oleg Deripaska and His Links to Putin, Potatin, Trump, the FBI & NSA
Next up is Oleg Deripaska. Now, who might have been responsible for mining, refining, and weaponizing heavy metal poison powders in Russia? Well, it turns out that Vladimir Potatin himself owned 39% of the Norilsk Nickel mining company, while his sanctioned partner oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, owned 28%. Deripaska is also owner of Rusal, another huge (aluminum) mining company. That name, Oleg Deripaska, might be familiar to you. In an article in Rolling Stone entitled “What’s Going on with Trump and the Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska?“, they detailed how Trump’s Treasury Department and GOP members in congress had voted to lift US sanctions on Deripaska and Rusal so he could continue to own his Rusal stake and to do business in America, including building a huge Rusal-funded aluminum plant in Senator Mitch McConnel’s Kentucky. Rolling Stone stated that:
“This is a dark twist in a sub-plot of Trump administration’s love story with the Russia of Vladimir Putin. Deripaska has been called “Putin’s favorite industrialist” and also had contentious and longstanding ties to now-jailed former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort — who had received $10 million loan from Deripaska — offered to give the aluminum magnate “private briefings” on the state of the presidential race in the summer of 2016.”
And Deripaska didn’t stop there: He would also succeed in compromising the FBI by turning the FBI’s now-indicted former head of counter-intelligence in New York City, one Charles McGonigal, the guy who ran the team running the counterintelligence op against Deripaska. In a New York Times article entitled: How an Oligarch May Have Recruited the F.B.I. Agent Who Investigated Him“, they describe how the DOJ’s unsealed charges against McGonigal detailed Deripaska’s hiring of McGonigal, and his ties to Vladimir Putin and the Russian mafia. McGonigal went on Deripaska’s payroll to the tune of $225,000 after he retired in 2018. I guess it’s no wonder the FBI ignored me after I reported Russia’s heavy metal poisoning to them. To be clear, Deripaska succeeded in compromising the FBI’s top counter-intelligence official in New York….the very agent in charge of investigating and countering Russian espionage.
Here’s the DOJ’s announcement on the McGonigal indictment and arrest.
As far as the NSA’s involvement, after I had reported these Russian ops to both the FBI and the NSA (in 2019 and 2021/2022) and having received no feedback or follow-up whatsover by either agency, the NSA would respond to my Freedom of Information Act request with a refusal to disclose any of the requested information pertaining to the Russians targeting me, on the sole grounds that they couldn’t because it was “a matter of national security.” What’s up with that General Nakasone? The NSA Office of the Inspector General (NSA OIG) also refused to respond to the complaint I filed with them about the NSA’s role in this, and in the hacking of my cell phone by the NSA in July of 2022, under what I had described to the OIG as an unlawfully obtained FISA warrant. To NSA IG Robert P. Storch, my question to you is, what is your agency hiding? You opened a public OIG investigation on the alleged NSA surveillance on Tucker Carlson, how about the same for the Founder of RussiLeaks? I can understand why Trump’s Intelligence and DOJ leaders would cover this stuff up, but the Biden Administration too? C’mon man.
Maxshut Shodayev and Alexander Egorov
Next up are Maxshut Shodayev, the sanctioned Minister of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media, and his advisor, Reksoft CEO and Edlow East-West Russia General Manager Alexander Egorov. Egorov was publically appointed as IT advisor to Shodayev in May of 2022 according to TAadvisor (quoting Reksoft). As Minister, Shodayev run’s all Russian mass media and as such is Putin’s Minister of Propaganda, Disinformation, and US election interference through digital (i.e., social media) platforms. As Shodayev’s IT advisor, Egorov continues to run his company Reksoft, a leading Russia digital/software development company. Most relevant here, Egorov also continues to run Jack Edlow’s Russian subsidiary in St. Petersburg: Edlow East-West-Russia. See Edlow’s Management Team web page where Egorov is listed as Edlow’s Russian GM. Shodayev was sanctioned by the US in December of 2022. Egorov and Reksoft remain un-sanctioned to date. One of Reksoft’s biggest customers advertised on its website is Rostelecom, the sanctioned state-owned national telecom firm which is controlled by Maxshut Shodayev’s Ministry.
Curiously, at exactly the same time as Egorov’s “appointment” by the Kremlin as Shodayev’s advisor of all things IT, Russia’s richest oligarch, the sanctioned Vladimir Potanin, Putin’s private equity go-to guy and Russian bank owner, bought a 40% stake in Egorov’s Reksoft in what appears to have been one in a cluster of 3 Putin-ordered rapid-fire “shotgun wedding” acquisitions by Potanin’s Interros Capital in April of 2022. Potanin’s Interros also now owns the sanctioned Russian bank Rosbank. More on Vladimir Potatin and these three Putin-ordered Interros shotgun wedding acquisitions later.
MOU Announced on Russian-Iranian (Propaganda) Media Collaboration
(Iran Times)
And on the subject of Russia’s state propaganda apparatus and what it’s been doing as of late, just last week on March 8th, the Tehran Times reported in an article entitled “Iran, Russia sign MOU to Enhance Media Ties”, that Bella Cherkesova, Maxshut Shodayev’s deputy at his propaganda Ministry had travelled to Tehran with a delegation to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate and collaborate on all media operations and messaging in the two countries.
“Not an Oligarch!” – The Jack Edlow Interview
Mr. Edlow agreed to a RussiLeaks Zoom interview with me on March 3, 2023 which is shown below. The interview started off on shaky ground when he threatened to terminate the interview before it began were I to continue to call Alexander Egorov an “oligarch.” It seemed like a disturbingly odd hill to declare a last stand on, I thought in the moment: Doth he protest too much? But I agreed to not do so and the interview proceeded. During the interview Mr. Edlow threaded the needle between illegality and immorality as he explained that he wasn’t breaking any laws and that he had no Russian customers. His customers, whom he did not name, are presumably consumers of Russian nuclear fuel and radiological materials, and/or, his customers perhaps send their expended nuclear waste materials back to Russia for re-processing, or both, and his shipping contracts were with them, not with Russia per se. Since the US itself continues to import Russian nuclear fuel for its nuclear power plants, as does the EU and others, some of his customers are likely US and EU entities. He told me he was about to leave on a trip to South Korea to meet with KHNP and KAERI, perhaps to establish nuclear fuel shipping contracts to ship Rosatom nuclear/radiological materials to them too.
When I raised the “morality” (versus the legality) aspect of continuing to do business in Russia given Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and when I pointed out that other companies had voluntarily divested themselves from their Russian operations on moral grounds absent sanctions, Mr. Edlow emphatically stated that he would continue to maintain business as usual with Russia and his customers as long as it was legal under US law, because he has to serve his customers. When I asked if he could envision any kind of moral redline that if Russia were to cross it, would cause him to voluntarily break ties with Russia, he refused to answer the question, stating that he was not going to engage in hypotheticals.
Russian Atoms for Sale
According to a report entitled Atoms for Sale: Developments in Russian Nuclear Energy Exports, published just last month by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, Russian exports of nuclear energy-related goods and materials topped $1B since the start of the war in Ukraine, just within 2022 alone, with marked increases in Russian exports specifically to Hungary, Turkey, and India. In the executive summary, the report states that:
“Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Western sanctions on the Russian
economy have been expanding. Nonetheless, Russia’s nuclear energy exports have not come
under economic restrictions. The Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation (Rosatom), which
has a monopoly over the Russian nuclear industry, has continued exports of nuclear fuel and
other goods relevant to the nuclear energy sector.”
Vladimir Potanin – The Wealthiest of the Russian Oligarchs
Last but not least is Vladimir Potatin, the wealthiest Russian oligarch with a reported net worth of $24 Billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
In April of 2022, one month after the Ukraine invasion and after severe US and EU sanctions began biting, Potatin made 3 rapid firesale acquisitions on order of Putin through Interros Capital. One was Rosbank, the Russian subsidiary of French banking group Société Générale, after the French group voluntarily decided to pull out of Russia after the invasion at a loss over $3.2 billion euros. The second acquisition was his purchase of Oleg Tinkoft’s shares (a 35% stake) in TCS Holdings, the holding company for Tinkoft Group, Russia’s third largest bank. The third was his purchase of a 40% stake in Alexander Egorov’s Reksoft, an IT/software development company.
In the case of TCS Holdings/Tinkoft Group, it was a Kremlin-forced firesale acquisition of Oleg Tinkoff’s shares in retribution for Tinkoff’s public criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in what was described in Forbes as a curse-filled Instagram post branding the war “insane”. Tinkoff was forced by the Kremlin to sell at only 3% of the estimated value, under threat of nationalization if he didn’t comply. Tinkoff publicly called it a forced firesale.
Opinion and Commentary
Alexander Egorov: An Unsanctioned Slave to Four Masters
Thus it would seem that given Alexander Egorov’s new-ish post-invasion relationship with Shodayev and his sale of 40 percent of Reksoft to Putin’s oligarch finance go-to guy Vladimir Potatin, that Egorov now serves four masters. Three are sanctioned Kremlin insiders, while the fourth is American CEO Jack Edlow. Has Egorov disclosed his Putin-inner circle Kremlin bosses and partners to Jack Edlow? And what are the odds that the man running an American-owned Russian nuclear/radiological materials shipping subsidiary in St. Petersburg, the man literally overseeing the shipping of Rosatom’s products internationally by Edlow, isn’t being subjected to coercion by Putin through his sanctioned cronies, one of who ran Rosatom and is nicknamed Putin’s Nuke Surprise?
To be clear, American CEO Jack Edlow continues to employ on his executive team as the GM of his nuclear/radiological material shipping subsidiary in St. Petersburg, the IT advisor to the sanctioned Russian Minister of propaganda and disinformation, a guy whose company Reksoft is 40% owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Vladimir Potatin. Along this track, this places Jack Edlow two heartbeats away from Putin. Egorov’s third Russian master has to be Sergie Kiriyenko, Putin’s “Nuke Surprise” hatchet man, given Egorov’s Edlow job responsibilities which involve shipping Rosatom’s nuclear/radiological material internationally. The as-yet unsanctioned Egorov provides Jack Edlow his plausible legal and moral deniability and rationalization for continuing to employ Egorov, to maintain his Russian subsidiary, and to continue to ship Russia’s nuclear/radiological materials absent sanctions.
Putin’s Bitch 3 Times Over
It is the nexus in time and space of these 3 rapid-fire Potanin acquisitions, and how one of the three was (according to Oleg Tinkoff) a Kremlin-forced fire sale as punishment for his criticism of the Ukraine war, that throws the cloud of suspicion over the other two concurrently executed Potanin acquisitions as also being Kremlin-ordered.
In the case of Reksoft and Alexander Egorov, Reksoft is an IT and software development company, which makes it something of an outlier. Did Reksoft need the money? Doubtful. One can reasonably conclude that Putin wanted to get his hooks deep into Egorov, an executive with an American company operating in St. Petersburg, a company that is facilitating Russian nuclear/radiological shipments worldwide in what is at this point a multi-billion-dollar Russian revenue stream not yet brought under the US sanctions regime. The best way Putin could do that was to force Egorov to sell a big chunk of Reksoft to his oligarch buddy Potatin, just like he did to Tinkoff, penetrate Reksoft’s board of directors, while simultaneously forcing Egorov to become a publicly acknowledged advisor to his propaganda minister Shodayev. And, so it would seem, Egorov is now Putin’s bitch, 3-times over. Yes, Jack Edlow employs one of Putin’s newest bitches.
The Genocide Redline and Loopholes
I guess, say, Russian genocide, which was the moral redline I was thinking of when I asked Mr. Edlow the question, wouldn’t cross Mr. Edlow’s personal moral redline far enough to voice it out loud, on the record in an interview, for fear of pissing of his Russian business associates and Putin himself. Maybe he felt that had he done so, the Russians would have thrown him out a window too. If that’s his mindset, fair enough, I get it. I’m probably the last guy to judge someone on the depth of their fear of a Putin assassination squad coming for them in America. In Putin’s kleptocracy, Putin rides roughshod over the Russian mafia heads and intelligence ops in both Russia and America, so his reach is long. But given Putin’s deliberate attacks on Ukrainian civilians, apartment buildings, and civilian infrastructure, however, is Russian genocide really even a hypothetical at this point? How many Ukrainian children need to die under Russian bombardment before you get out of Russia? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Give us your number. The money you earn shipping this Russian material is blood money…the blood of Ukrainian women and children.
Does Mr. Edlow have any moral redline at all? We don’t know. Instead, he named-dropped the White House, stating that he had been invited to attend the March 2, 2023 signing of the presidential “National Security Memorandum (NSM-19) to Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism and Advance Nuclear and Radioactive Material Security” in an attempt to cloak himself with the American flag. Congrats on your White House invite Mr. Edlow. I’m not sure how your White House connections make you any less culpable in your role in the generation of the billions Rosatom contributes to the Russian war effort, or the morality of your business decision to continue to grease the Russian nuclear/radiological supply chain. After all, if Edlow doesn’t ship it, some other shipping company will, right? I’m sure the Ukrainians will be as impressed as I was with your rationalizations and your White House connections.
By not contracting with Rosatom/Tenex directly, and instead only contracting with Russia’s nuclear/radiological materials customers who in turn have direct contracts with the Russian state-owned “Nuclear Superstore” that is Rosatom and its subsidiaries, Mr. Edlow can make the technically and legally correct claim that he has no “Russian customers” or “Russian contracts”. That’s a lawyer’s answer. But one wonders how much in tribute and taxes does Edlow East-West Russia pay each year in St. Petersburg to the Russian Federation or the local St. Petersburg government to operate there, not to mention to other entities inside the Russian kleptocracy that is “Putin’s world,” or to other Russian “organizations” that may be operating inside the United States itself through cutouts, fronts, or offshore companies. What is the ownership structure for both Edlow International and its Russian subsidiary? We don’t know. Edlow is a privately held company and Mr. Edlow isn’t talking. I asked him, he wouldn’t answer. Why not? I assume he reports his ownership structure to the US federal government, such as the DOE or US Treasury, as a necessary disclosure under US laws governing the shipping of nuclear and radiological materials. Perhaps a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the DOE, or to the DCSA on any Foreign Ownership, Control, or Influence (FOCI) at your company, might yield us that information.
Mr. Edlow is exploiting what could be characterized as a deliberate loophole in the sanctions regime that the US and other nations have left due to our dependence on Russian-produced nuclear fuel to power our plants. According to a recent Washington Post Article entitled: Why Russia Has Such a Strong Grip on Europe’s Nuclear Power it may take years for us and our allies to wean ourselves off the Russian supply. It appears the US company Westinghouse is stepping up its game and the US and its allies are looking to switch to non-Russian suppliers.
“Once Ze Rockets Are Up Who Cares Where Zey Come Down- Zat’s Not My Department”
In the information and social media domain within which sanctioned Russian Minister of Propaganda Maxshut Shodayev rules, it’s like Mark Zuckerberg claiming he’s not legally or morally responsible for Russian disinformation campaigns targeting Americans that have been launched from Russian Facebook accounts on his platform, while Zuckerberg collects tens of millions in Facebook ad revenue from Russian cutouts and off-shore shell companies, including the Internet Research Agency. Yeah, it was legal. There were no US sanctions against social media accounts in Russia. It reminds me of the old line from satrist Dr. Tom Lehrer’s “Wernher Von Braun” song: “Once ze rockets are up, who cares where zey come down…Zat’s not my department, says Wernher Von Braun.” If you haven’t heard this classic bit of musical satire, here’s the music video.
From 2015 to March of 2022, Zuckerberg collected millions in ad revenue from Russian trolls and fake Russian accounts set up by Minister Shodayev’s apparatus, including the sanctioned Wagner Group CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin who owns the Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency which is down the road from Egorov’s Reksoft and Edlow’s St. Petersburg offices. These Facebook accounts were spewing disinformation poison that infected the psyches of tens of millions of Americans, turning us against each other, while Putin, Prigozhin, and Shodayev watched with glee as America almost tore itself apart.
It took Putin’s full-scale invasion in February of 2022 for Zuckerberg to wake up and acknowledge the immorality of his business practices, and he finally banned Russian advertising – without waiting for US sanctions. While one can criticize Zuckerburg for being way to slow on the uptake, and I do criticize him for that, at least he changed his ways when it could no longer be denied the damage his platform was doing to our country, the country that made him a multi-billionaire. I’d like to be able to say the same for Jack Edlow some day.
Rest assured, Russian nuclear/radiological materials production by Rosatom, under the oversight of the sanctioned Sergiy Kiriyenko, Russia’s comrad “Nuke Suprise” and “The Viceroy of Donbas”, earns Russia tens of billions of dollars in revenue. And some portion of that revenue is being used by Putin to fund Russian weapons production, the war in Ukraine, Kiriyenko’s “administration” of Russian occupied Ukraine territories, supplies to Iran, Russia’s sham elections in Ukraine, and the Russian propoganda/disinformation apparatus that Alexander Egorov has been dragooned to be a part of. And rest assured, the likelihood is high that some of Rosatom’s nuclear/radiological material and know-how will wind up in the hands of terrorist groups supported and harbored by Iran, their own nuclear weapons development program, and their intelligence services and QUDs forces. Can you say “dirty bomb” terrorism or assassination by radiation and heavy metals poisoning?
The US State Department Response
I reached out to the State Department’s office of the Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, led by Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, and gave them access to a draft of this article and asked for comment and asked some questions. They initially told me someone would call me back the next day to discuss the matter. But instead, I ended up with only an “On Background” answer by email from the State Department Press Office stating that: “As a general matter, we do not comment on communications with Congress….and…”We don’t preview sanctions.” I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
How We Came to Know Edlow International
RussiLeaks stumbled across Edlow International last summer by accident when we discovered that Edlow’s Washington DC headquarters office was located immediately above RussiLeaks’ office at Cove Dupont on Connecticut Ave. What are the odds that RussiLeaks would rent office space directly under the only US nuclear/radiological materials shipping company that maintains a subsidiary in Russia? That’s some kind of cosmic karma.
A simple review of Edlow’s website (shown above) revealed that it was an international nuclear/radiological materials shipping company, that it transported Russian-produced materials, that Edlow had a Russian subsidiary based in St. Petersburg, and that the subsidiary was led by Reksoft CEO Alexander Egorov. On a phone interview with Jack Edlow last summer, he informed me that he came to know Alexander Egorov through his relationship with Egorov’s father, who was a communist general in the army of the USSR. Mr. Edlow told me in essence that Alexander Egorov was a good guy and that he had known him for years and I took him at his word. After that phone call, I put it on the back-back burner and filed it away as a curiosity worth watching.
Fast forward to now. After a fresh review of the Edlow website, nothing has changed. It still describes Edlow as providing nuclear/radiological shipping and inspection services within and from Russia specifically. Further research indicated that the non-proliferation HEU Agreement mentioned on the Edlow website which was entered into by the US and Russia had expired back in 2013, and yet here we were in 2023, ten years later and a year into the Ukraine war, and yet nothing had changed in Edlow’s public marketing information. I emailed Mr. Edlow and asked for a Zoom interview, and he obliged. When I asked Mr. Edlow why his website continues to list his various activities inside Russia under the expired HUE Agreement, he claimed it was because they hadn’t updated their website. Really? In 10 years? See the screenshot of his webpage above.
Sketchy Ties to Sanctioned Russians and Website Fuels Skepticism
Even after our interview, that 10-year-old outdated Russia information is still up there on the Edlow website. It still says they monitor and inspect nuclear/radiological shipments inside of Russia. Perhaps your Marketing VP Marilene Conde needs to get on that, Mr. Edlow. Just saying.
And Just Why Should We Trust You Jack Edlow?
Now if we can’t trust your own website to provide the American public accurate information about your own company’s current in-country Russian operations, if you are somehow unaware that your own Alexander Egorov works for the sanctioned Russian Minister of Propaganda and that his Reksoft is 40% owned by Russia’s wealthiest sanctioned oligarch who is Putin’s private equity go-to guy, if you won’t tell us who owns your company, and you won’t tell us where you draw a moral redline Mr. Edlow, why should we trust anything you tell us?
