A Russ­ian busi­ness­man who made a dar­ing es­cape from house ar­rest in Italy where he was nabbed on a U.S. war­rant for breach­ing West­ern sanc­tions sur­faced in Rus­sia on Tues­day, say­ing he fled be­cause Ital­ian courts would have giv­en in to Amer­i­can pres­sure to ex­tra­dite him.

Arty­om Uss, the 40-year-old son of the gov­er­nor of Rus­sia’s vast Kras­no­yarsk re­gion in east­ern Siberia, was ar­rest­ed in Italy in Oc­to­ber on a U.S. war­rant. The U.S. has sought Uss’ ex­tra­di­tion on charges of smug­gling West­ern tech­nolo­gies in vi­o­la­tion of West­ern sanc­tions and mon­ey laun­der­ing. He was trans­ferred from jail to house ar­rest at a com­pound on the out­skirts of Mi­lan in De­cem­ber.

Last month, Uss fled af­ter an Ital­ian court ruled to ex­tra­dite him to the U.S. His lo­ca­tion was un­known un­til Tues­day, when he told the state RIA Novosti news agency that he was back in Rus­sia.

Uss ar­gued he had to flee be­cause the Ital­ian court had “demon­strat­ed its clear po­lit­i­cal bias” and was like­ly to “cave in un­der the U.S. au­thor­i­ties’ pres­sure” amid Rus­sia-West ten­sions over fight­ing in Ukraine.

“In to­day’s in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment when they play against us ‘with­out rules,’ my re­turn home, even though it hap­pened in a ‘non-stan­dard’ way, is a vic­to­ry,” Uss told RIA Novosti.

He didn’t of­fer any de­tails of his es­cape but thanked “strong and re­li­able peo­ple who were next to me dur­ing those dra­mat­ic days.”

The Ital­ian me­dia have claimed that Russ­ian in­tel­li­gence agen­cies have been in­volved in ar­rang­ing Uss’ es­cape. Af­ter re­mov­ing his elec­tron­ic bracelet, he was re­port­ed­ly dri­ven out of the coun­try on a fake pass­port be­fore tak­ing a pri­vate jet back to Rus­sia.

Russ­ian of­fi­cials haven’t com­ment­ed on the me­dia re­ports.

The Moscow City Court is­sued a rul­ing in De­cem­ber seek­ing Uss’ ar­rest in an ap­par­ent ma­noeu­vre to set the stage for his ex­tra­di­tion back home. The Russ­ian In­te­ri­or Min­istry on Tues­day re­voked its war­rant for Uss’ ar­rest af­ter he re­spond­ed to in­ves­ti­ga­tors’ ques­tions re­lat­ed to his case, Uss’ lawyer Alex­ei Tikhomirov told the In­ter­fax news agency. He said in­ves­ti­ga­tors asked him not to leave Moscow. —MOSCOW (AP)

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Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS