LVIV – Sellers of radioactive materials have been convicted in Ukraine's Lviv region, the press service of the regional prosecutor's office has reported.
Each of the five members of a criminal group – natives of Lviv and Zakarpattia regions – have been sentenced to eight years in jail on counts of illegally making a nuclear explosive device that emits radiation.
Members of the criminal group offered a buyer a certain amount of radioactive material in 2009, and showed him a photo of a container allegedly filled with radioactive materials, as well as documents confirming their origin.
The sellers then negotiated a $15 million price for the deal and agreed on how the money and the radioactive material would be swapped.
The organizer and a member of the group were caught in the act of handing the container over to the buyer.
The container with the radioactive material was seized by officers of Lviv regional security department.
Experts of the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences examined the container and stated that it was a source of radiation hazardous to humans if the rules for handling nuclear materials were violated.
