Pavel Flider and Trident International

Trident International, a company belonging to Pavel Flider, an American citizen of Russian origin, received $249,997 from Kenovetco Ltd., a company active in the Laundromat, in June 2012.

Trident and Flider are noteworthy for allegedly smuggling restricted microchip technology to Russia through Finnish and Estonian freight forwarders. A US Commerce Department agent identified at least one of Flider’s Russian customers as a procurement front company for Russian intelligence.

Flider was arrested in March 2015 and indicted by a federal grand jury for smuggling, conspiracy, and money laundering. He initially maintained his innocence, but changed his plea to “guilty” of money laundering in August 2016.

As part of a plea deal, Trident admitted to receiving more than $50 million from abroad in payment for its illegal exports. These payments took place between 2011 and 2014 - a period that includes the Laundromat transfers - raising the possibility that the laundering pipeline may have been used to pay Trident and Flider for technology exports. Trident’s federal indictment and the Kenovetco bank records both describe payments into the same Trident bank account.

(Click here to view court documents related to the case.)

Flider awaits sentencing on Aug. 22. He did not respond to requests for comment.