Artem Uss, the Russian businessman and son of the governor of the Siberian region who is facing extradition from Italy to the United States, has escaped house arrest, Italian police said on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Artem Uss is accused in the US of transporting oil from Venezuela in violation of sanctions and bank fraud.

The suspect had been on the run since Wednesday afternoon when the electronic bracelet gave off an “alert signal,” police carabinieri said in a statement.

Officers went to his home in Basilio, on the outskirts of Milan, only to find he had left and are now actively looking for him, the carabinieri added.

The Italian newspaper Corriere tells about the entire network that helped him escape, as well as about the departure of his wife. In addition, they do not neglect the involvement of Russian services.

A business that the White House is watching with concern and that risks opening a diplomatic case between Italy, Russia and the United States.

Artem Uss would already be in another country

Several frames recorded the escape of Artem Uss: a car with an accomplice behind the wheel, which was waiting for him in front of the Cascina Vione complex and leaves for the countryside in the vicinity of the city of Basilio (Milan)

The investigations of the Carabinieri from the Milan investigative department and the Corsico company are based on several fixed points.

• The first concerns the presence of accomplices – the man in the car – and the network that planned and organized Us’ escape.
• Then, despite the fact that the decisions of the judges of the Court of Appeal indicated that it was his wife who should “take care of Us and provide for all his life needs”, the woman returned to Russia on March 13. as he told the judges through Uss’ lawyers that he was caring for one of his children.
• She told the Court of Appeal that she was to be absent from Italy from March 13 to April 17, just in time for her extradition hearing to the US, which took place on Tuesday, March 21, the day before the escape. Therefore, it is suspected that the woman’s absence due to family circumstances was not accidental.
• The most likely hypothesis is that the 40-year-old man was already in another country. Investigators tracked down the vehicle, which was registered to a third party, and are now trying to reconstruct its exact route.

It is likely that Uss has false documents with convenient IDs, since there is no trace of him in the border checks and flight lists.

Who could provide him with these documents?

Uss and his family have what investigators describe as “unlimited” financial resources, so much so that they believe he could have orchestrated the entire escape himself.

But, taking into account the previous statements of Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov (“Russian diplomatic missions will do everything in their power to protect the interests of the Ukrainian Security Service”), the involvement of Moscow’s services is by no means excluded, Corriere writes.