Germany detains a Russian man suspected of evading sanctions to buy antennas and sonar for Russia

Germany detained a Russian citizen on suspicion of evading sanctions to buy antennas and sonar for the Russian Federation.

Customs officers in Nuremberg, Germany, have detained a Russian citizen suspected of circumventing sanctions, Tagesspiegel reports. The Frankfurt am Main prosecutor’s office explained that they suspect the detainee of violating the Foreign Trade and Payments Act.

Russian citizen used his German firm to evade sanctions – Investigators

Investigators say that as part of an international network, the Russian used his company based in Germany to purchase “maritime goods” for Russia in violation of sanctions.

The Frankfurt prosecutor’s office representative said that authorities suspect the man of trading in satellite antennas and sonar for use in the deep sea.

According to the investigation, the detained Russian man could have sold sanctioned technology to Russia.

Investigators also conducted searches at a total of six properties in Nuremberg, Frankfurt am Main, Gross-Umstadt in Hesse, and Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. During the searches, investigators seized a significant amount of evidence.

Germany’s sentence to a Russian for sanctions evasion

In July, a German court sentenced a German citizen with dual German-Russian citizenship to six years and nine months in prison for selling electronics to Russian companies for military use in violation of sanctions.

The Stuttgart court declared that between January 2020 and May 2023, the 59-year-old man delivered 120,000 parts to Russia for military use.

According to the court’s decision, parts were used in the Orlan-10 drone, which the Russian army uses in the war against Ukraine.

Hellmann Worldwide Logistics’ involvement in sanctions evasion

The media also reported that the logistics company HT Rus, owned by the German-registered freight carrier Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, helps Russian manufacturers circumvent sanctions.

Hellmann’s Moscow office had assisted Russian industrial companies in shipping West-produced tools, parts, and equipment to Russia prior to the all-out war, but during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, international sanctions severely limited such exports.

In the new circumstances, Heinrich Tapp Rus (HT Rus), a Russian-registered firm whose owners at the time comprised at least two former Hellmann employees, assumed control of several of Hellmann’s former clients.

The website of HT Rus provides Russian customers with “parallel imports,” a term often used to explain sending items via foreign nations like Turkey or the UAE in order to circumvent Western sanctions on Russia. The company set its marketing message as “New reality—new opportunity.”

Reuters discovered using official corporate registries in Russia and Germany and Russian tax records for 2023 and 2024 that HT Rus had been servicing Russian clients under global sanctions for funding the Kremlin’s war machine.