The judge didn’t believe she was just the banker and tax avoidance manipulator
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Ukraine-hating Russian-Canadian woman Kristina Puzyreva won’t be sipping Moscow Mules where she’s going.
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The war profiteer, 34, was sentenced to two years in Brooklyn Federal Court for a multimillion-dollar scheme to ship weapons components to sanction-strangled Russia.
Puzyreva claimed she was her husband’s patsy but the New York Daily News reported that the Instagram-friendly stunner’s text messages torpedoed any suggestion she was a dupe.
Brooklyn Federal Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall said she had been inclined to give Puzyreva a lighter sentence because of the horrific conditions at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center — her home the past nine months.
During her jolt in jail, she was attacked and then stashed in solitary while staff sorted out whether she was, in fact, a victim.
But Puzyreva’s courtroom finger-pointing soured the judge.
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“When I committed this crime, I knew my husband had an illegal business … I never knew that these electronic components would go to weapons,” she protested.
“I trusted my husband, but he never mentioned to me that it would go somewhere to hurt someone.”
She added: “I hate myself that I let myself be part of that.”
Puzyreva said she was just the banker and tax avoidance manipulator. The judge didn’t believe her.
“I believe that was a patent lie,” DeArcy Hall said, referring to a text exchange between Puzyreva and her husband.
The Montreal couple discussed a package that was “not a pretty part” being intercepted by customs officials.
She pleaded guilty in February to money laundering and conspiracy. Her husband, Nikolay Goltsev, also copped a plea and is slated to be sentenced in December.
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According to the News, the couple worked with a third man named Salimdzhon Nasriddinov (who pleaded guilty) and others to smuggle $7 million in weapons-related electronics in 2022 and 2023.
After leaving the U.S., the components were moved through middlemen in Turkey, Hong Kong, India, China and the United Arab Emirates.
Rather than being a rube, the feds said Puzyreva was the “linchpin” of the conspiracy through her control of the bank accounts connected to the scheme.
And she was fully behind Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s onslaught into Ukraine that’s claimed tens of thousands of lives.
She texted her hubby: “What is Putin waiting for. He needs to destroy Ukraine. He needs to put fear into them. Those losers. … I hate (ethnic slur for Ukrainians) anyway.”
Not so, she told the judge, claiming she left the Motherland at 17 and never wants to return. She added she is half-Ukrainian but didn’t like the cheering for Russian civilian deaths.
“Although we believe the sentence was excessive considering her limited role in the conspiracy, we understand and accept the absolute horror of the war being waged against Ukraine,” her lawyer, Jeff Chabrowe, said Wednesday.
@HunterTOSun
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