Netherlands Sentences Russian Citizens For Circumventing EU Sanctions

• 1.11.2023, 2:32

The convicted person’s company was also fined 200,000 euros.

The Rotterdam District Court sentenced a Russian businessman to 18 months in prison on Tuesday, October 31. He was tried for supplying microchips to Russia circumventing EU sanctions. In addition, the company of the convicted person is obliged to pay a fine of 200,000 euros.

According to the casefile, the Russian citizen was violating European sanctions laws for more than seven months supplying Russian companies with dual-use and other war-relevant goods. To do this, he created a fictitious scheme with fake documents indicating that sanctioned goods, including microchips, were sent not to Russia, but to the Maldives and other countries.

“The suspect consciously and deliberately circumvented the restrictions imposed by the European Union by his actions, and thereby violated international and national legislation,” the court’s verdict reads. “It seriously affected the sanctions policy aimed at denying Russian access to critical technologies that could contribute to the technological improvement of the Russian defence and security sector.”

According to local media reports, the convicted person is 56-year-old Dmitry K., who has Russian and Dutch citizenship. He was arrested in the Netherlands in September 2022. During the hearing, the Prosecutor's Office argued that the man sold sanctioned goods worth about 2 million euros. The customer was a company that collaborated with the Rostec state corporation, which supplies, among other things, products for the defence industry of the Russian Federation. The prosecution demanded three years in prison for the man and a fine of 350,000 euros.