Manager of New York freight forwarder accused of illegal oil, gas product exports

December 12, 2024

The manager of a New York-based freight forwarding company is facing criminal charges alleging she violated federal export controls by illegally shipping oil and gas products to Russia.

Natalya Ivanovna Mazulina, of Federal Way, Washington, also known as “Natasha Mazulina,” was indicted on 12 counts of conspiracy to export controlled goods to Russia without a license, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to commit money laundering, exporting controlled goods to Russia without a license, filing false export documents with the U.S. government and smuggling goods contrary to U.S. law. She was arrested Tuesday in Seattle, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The 28-page indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York states that Mazulina worked as the Western regional manager of an international freight forwarding company based out of Jamaica, New York, which provided airfreight, ocean freight, warehouse and storage, and ground transportation services. The company, which was not named in the indictment, operated out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington.

Court documents claim the freight forwarder marketed itself as part of a global network of logistics companies that provided logistics and supply chain solutions to customers around the world.

“As alleged, Mazulina used her position as a manager of a freight forwarding company to facilitate unlawful exports to Russia through JFK airport,” said Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a statement. “Evading U.S export regulations presents a danger to our national security, and we will continue to use all of our law enforcement and national security tools [to] make sure these enablers, both individuals and corporations, cannot operate in our district.”

Mazulina is accused of violating the Export Control Reform Act, a law that was passed by Congress in 2018, which authorized the president to set export policies to protect national security and advance foreign policy. It is administered by the Department of Commerce.

Since 2022, in response to the country’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration has used the act as a primary means of enforcing a variety of sanctions against Russia, which includes bans on exports to Russia of technology for oil and gas exploration.

What happened?

Federal prosecutors claim that from December 2022 to December 2024, Mazulina “conspired with Russian freight forwarding companies and others to unlawfully ship controlled items, including industrial oil and gas equipment from the United States to Russia, through intermediary countries,” according to the indictment.

Court documents claim that Mazulina and her co-conspirators, who were not named in the indictment, “Unlawfully procured, transported and shipped, from the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, goods from the United States, such as oil and gas compression and flow measurement equipment, to Russian end users, including a company that promoted its work for oil and gas projects in Russia and customers in the Russian military-industrial base.”

The indictment alleges that in June 2023, Mazulina told colleagues that “Her clients were paying through bank accounts in third party countries because ‘[m]ost of [her] clients [were] currently sanctioned with USA.’”

As part of the scheme, Mazulina allegedly told her co-conspirators to remove any reference to Russia from business records and export documents.

According to the indictment, Mazulina allegedly conspired to illegally export goods from the United States to Russia by shipping oil and gas equipment through a Russian freight forwarder based in St. Petersburg, Russia, which was “related to a larger Emirati global air cargo transportation company that marketed itself as primarily servicing Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (‘UAE’), China and Hong Kong.”

If convicted, Mazulina faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for each count of conspiring to export or exporting controlled goods to Russia without a license; a maximum of 20 years in prison for conspiring to commit money laundering; up to 10 years in prison for each count of smuggling; and a maximum of five years in prison for each count of conspiracy and filing false export documents with the U.S. government.

Read more articles by Clarissa Hawes.