Name: German authorities have arrested five over exports to Russian defense companies | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-02-02T17:24:36.000Z
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German customs agents have carried out raids against a network suspected of breaking sanctions imposed on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

Basic passive voice

The raids were carried out in cooperation with Germany's foreign intelligence service.

The BND AntiW political correspondent Julia Sardelli joins me now with more details.

Yes, so as you said, we have seen that five suspects were arrested.

One of them, a dual German Russian citizen, was the sole shareholder and managing director of a trading company based in the northern German city of Lubeck.

Now, the suspects have allegedly, through this company, procured goods to send to Russian industry and export to Russia, going against EU sanctions.

Now, according to the investigation, up to 16,000 deliveries were carried out since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and since the introduction of sanctions against Russia.

And the value of these deliveries is at least of 30 million euros.

And we know that on the Russian side, according to the investigation, Russian government agencies were managing this procurement network and that at least 24 arms companies in Russia had been on the receiving line of these exports.

Now, we heard from the prosecutor's office who told us that it's enough for arms companies in Russia to be the recipients of any kind of good for this to be a violation of the sanctions.

And they also told us that some of these sanctioned goods that have been exported order to these companies in Russia amounts to things like electronics.

We don't know many more details about what exactly these goods are, but

we know that also dual use goods, so called dual use goods to Russia are sanctioned.

These are objects, goods that aren't necessarily weapons, but

that can be repurposed and used to then actually build weapons.

We know that this one individual who was managing this one trading company was also using a shell company to do these transactions, had set up fake customers inside and outside of the European Union, that there was then another fake company in Russia that was operating in terms of receiving these goods.

So quite a complex operation here that was found out and hopefully dismantled by German authorities.