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German customs officers arrested five people on Monday on suspicion of violating the European Union's embargo on Russia by exporting industrial goods to Russian arms manufacturers.
The defendants organized around 16,000 shipments to Russia, according to the ongoing investigation, with illegal transactions totaling at least 30 million euros, Germany's Federal Prosecutor General's office said in a press release.
The arrests come as authorities in Kiev call on European leaders to crack down on exports of industrial goods and parts that Russia could use to produce weapons deployed in the war against Ukraine. Among the five people charged are two suspects with dual German-Russian citizenship and one with dual German-Ukrainian citizenship.
At the center of the investigation is a trading company in the northern German city of Lübeck, owned by a suspect identified by the court as Nikita S.
“Since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, he and the other defendants have used the company to procure goods for Russian industry and to export them to Russia on numerous occasions,” prosecutors said. According to them, “to conceal their activities, the defendants used at least one other fictitious company in Lübeck, fictitious buyers inside and outside the European Union, and a Russian company as a recipient, for which Nikita S. also holds a position of responsibility.”
The "end users" of the exported goods included at least 24 defense companies listed on Russia's stock exchange, prosecutors said.
Russian government agencies allegedly supported the procurement, according to the statement.
The exports included, among other things, mechanical and technical components for Russian weapons production, such as ball bearings and semiconductor devices, according to a report by public broadcaster ARD.
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