Former President of Transportation Company Found Guilty of Violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Other Crimes

The former president of Transportation Logistics Inc. (TLI), a Maryland-based transportation company that provides services for the transportation of nuclear materials to customers in the United States and abroad, was found guilty today for his role in a scheme to bribe an official at a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation and on related fraud and conspiracy charges.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur of the District of Maryland and Assistant Director in Charge Timothy R. Slater of the FBI’s Washington Field Office and Inspector General Teri L. Donaldson of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General (DOE-OIG) made the announcement.

After a three-week trial, Mark Lambert, 56, of Mount Airy, Maryland, was found guilty of four counts of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), two counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and commit wire fraud.  Sentencing has been scheduled for March 9, 2020, before U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang of the District of Maryland, who presided over the trial.

According to the evidence presented at trial, Lambert participated in a scheme to bribe Vadim Mikerin, a Russian official at JSC Techsnabexport (TENEX), a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation and the sole supplier and exporter of Russian Federation uranium and uranium enrichment services to nuclear power companies worldwide, in order to secure contracts with TENEX.  The trial evidence demonstrated that, over the course of years, Lambert conspired with others at TLI to make the corrupt and fraudulent bribery and kickback payments to Mikerin through offshore bank accounts associated with shell companies, at Mikerin’s direction.  In order to conceal the bribe payments, Lambert and his co-conspirators caused fake invoices to be prepared, purportedly from TENEX to TLI, that described services that were never provided, and then Lambert and others caused TLI to wire the corrupt payments for those purported services to shell companies in Latvia, Cyprus and Switzerland. 

The trial evidence further showed that Lambert and other members of the conspiracy used code words like “lucky figures,” “LF,” “lucky numbers” and “cake” to describe the payments in emails to the Russian official at an alias, personal email account under the name “Marvin Jodel.”  The evidence at trial also demonstrated that Lambert and his co-conspirators caused TLI to overbill TENEX by building the cost of the bribe payments into their invoices, and TENEX thus overpaid for TLI’s services in order to fund the bribes paid to Mikerin.

This case is being investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office and DOE-OIG.  Assistant Chief Vanessa A. Sisti and Trial Attorney Derek J. Ettinger of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney David I. Salem of the District of Maryland are prosecuting the case.

The Department appreciates the significant cooperation provided by its law enforcement colleagues in Switzerland’s Office of the Attorney General as well as authorities in Latvia and Cyprus.

The Fraud Section is responsible for investigating and prosecuting all FCPA matters. Additional information about the Justice Department’s FCPA enforcement efforts can be found at www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-practices-act.