A Savannah resident, Viacheslav Zhukov, has been charged in a superseding indictment with export violations and false statements in connection with rifle scopes that he mailed from Savannah, Georgia, to Russia without the required license from the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”). He is being held without bond awaiting trial.

As this blog has often noted, a frequent challenge in export prosecutions is establishing that the defendant knew that his unlicensed export was illegal. U.S. export laws are, as we all know, complicated; and a Russian immigrant might not know that mailing rifle scopes to Russia without a license would be illegal.

As the false statement count suggests, there is some evidence that Zhukov may have known that the exports required a license from the U.S. government.  Zhukov allegedly filed a Customs Declaration with the U.S. Postal Service saying that the boxes contained a “cardboard box, a model battle tank, and men’s jeans.” Telling customs that you’re mailing a “cardboard box” to Russia probably is more or less an open invitation to having your shipment detained and inspected, which may well be how he was caught.

Of course, there may be other reasons that Zhukov fibbed about the contents of the box. Perhaps he was hoping to avoid Russian import license requirements or duties. At this point, we have no idea what his explanation will be for providing an incorrect description of the items being exported.

One interesting digression: Mr. Zhukov has a Facebook page (although he’s not able to update it at the moment), and the only thing at all that he says that he likes is an album by Murder Death Kill appealingly titled “F*** With Us And Find Out.”  (The asterisks are not part of the original album title.) That album features songs such as “Kill Yourself,” “People Will Die,” and “Hostility.” I’m sure he now wishes that he liked (at least on Facebook) something more innocuous like Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Hits or the Cole Porter Songbook.

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