The Department of Justice last week unsealed an indictment against a former co-president of a Maryland-based transportation company for his alleged role in a bribery scheme involving an official at a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation.

Mark Lambert was charged in an 11-count indictment with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and to commit wire fraud, seven counts of violating the FCPA, two counts of wire fraud and one count of international promotion money laundering.

According to the indictment, beginning at least as early as 2009 and continuing until October 2014, Mark Lambert conspired with others at the unnamed company, "Transportation Company A" to make corrupt and fraudulent bribery and kickback payments to offshore bank accounts associated with shell companies, at the direction of, and for the benefit of, 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, to secure contracts with TENEX.

To conceal the corrupt and fraudulent bribe payments, Lambert and others allegedly caused fake invoices to be prepared, purportedly from TENEX to "Transportation Company A", that described services that were never provided, and then Lambert and others caused "Transportation Company A" to wire the corrupt payments for those purported services to shell companies in Latvia, Cyprus, and Switzerland.

According to the Department of Justice, Lambert and others allegedly used code words like “lucky figures,” “LF,” “lucky numbers,” and “cake” to describe the payments in e-mails to the Russian official at his personal email account. The indictment also alleges that Lambert and others caused Transportation Company A to overbill TENEX by building the cost of the corrupt payments into their invoices, and TENEX thus overpaid for Transportation Company A's services.

In June 2015, Lambert’s former co-president, Daren Condrey, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the FCPA and commit wire fraud, and Mikerin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering involving violations of the FCPA. Mikerin is currently serving a sentence of 48 months in prison, and Condrey is awaiting sentencing. Lambert and Condrey are both former co-presidents of Transport Logistics International.

The indictment includes allegations against Lambert based on his role in effectuating the criminal scheme with Condrey, Mikerin, and others. The case against Lambert is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Theodore Chuang of the District of Maryland.

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