MOSCOW, October 12 (RAPSI) – The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York has asked a court, to give Viktoria Klebanova, one of the defendants in the case over illegal export of microelectronic components to Russia, a sentence below the advisory range, the court documents available to RAPSI read on Thursday.

The prosecutor noted that the defendant, who admitted guilt, was cooperating with authorities since the day of her arrest in 2013 and provided valuable information on criminal actions of Arc Electronics company’s employees headed by recently convicted Alexander Fishenko.

Sentencing of Klebanova is scheduled for October 18. The prosecutor asks to lower the potential prison term to 46-57 months (about 4.5 years).

In October 2012, FBI made public the fact that eight people had been arrested on charges of unlawfully exporting high technologies to Russia for needs of the Russian military and special services. Four employees of Arc Electronics, a private Houston-based company, were arrested alongside the company’s co-owner Alexander Fishenko.

The firm took part in transactions aimed to purchase electronic components from US manufacturers and consequently sell these components to Russian firms. As the case material show, the customer of Fishenko’s company was Apex System having connections to a number of Russian enterprises.

According to U.S. Department of Justice “Export laws exist as an important part of our national security framework and protecting national assets from ending up in the hands of our potential adversaries is one of our highest priorities.”

Fishenko pleaded guilty to the entire indictment in September 2015. In particular, he agreed in his guilty plea that he violated the United States law by selling electronic components to Russia without required licenses. He also pleaded guilty to ancillary money laundering, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and being an unregistered foreign agent.

On July 22, 2016, Fishenko was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Later,  Sevinj Taghiyeva was sentenced to time served. She voluntary self-deported from the United States. U.S. citizen Svetalina Zagon was found guilty in September and sentenced to time served as well. In March 2017, Russian citizen Alexander Posobilov received a 135 month prison term in this case.