Orion intermediaries

Alexander Atasuntsev, “Layout” editor, “Bureau”, OCCRP February 21, 2024 |

How the Kazakhs and Belarusians arranged the supply of equipment for the Kremlin’s military machine, bypassing sanctions

Russia continues massive shelling of Ukraine. International sanctions were supposed to weaken the Kremlin's military potential. But modern equipment continues to arrive in Russia through roundabout routes. In a joint investigation by “Vestka”, the Belarusian publication “ Bureau ” and the Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime ( OCCRP ), we will tell you how Western equipment for the military-industrial complex gets to Russia bypassing sanctions and who is behind these supplies.

We would like to thank CyberPartisan , OCCRP ID , Vlast publication, and OSINT specialist Alexandra Borovikova for their assistance in preparing this material.

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Russian supplier

November 15, 2022. Russia is conducting another massive shelling of energy facilities in Ukraine. Ships, planes and drones are attacking - about a hundred missiles are launched. The Ukrainian air force is quite successful in repelling the attacks - 75 cruise missiles and 12 drones were shot down. Among the equipment knocked out by the Ukrainians is a rare Orion combat drone, which in Russia is considered an analogue of the Turkish Bayraktar .

Such a drone can simultaneously carry six 20-kilogram aerial bombs that destroy enemy tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and manpower. Air bombs are produced by the Moscow Central Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TSNIIHM). A year before the war, this institute decided to engage in technical re-equipment. And then Russian and Belarusian intermediaries came to the rescue , transporting modern equipment and continuing to do so even when sanctions were imposed against the Russian military-industrial complex.

In March 2021, TsNIIHM announced a tender for the supply of Western equipment to modernize production. The OSTEK-SMT company received a contract for two million dollars. It is part of the OSTEK group of companies. It was created by Alexander Razorenov and Vadim Garshin, who came from the Russian Central Scientific Research Institute of Technology after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the years, their brainchild has turned from an ordinary dealer of imported equipment into a holding company for equipping Russian industrial enterprises with modern turnkey equipment.

OSTEK’s business biography includes the supply of Japanese equipment to the Kolomna enterprise Mechanical Engineering Design Bureau, which developed the Tochka-U andIskander-M missile systems. Now Russia is using such weapons against Ukraine.

In addition, the track record of the Russian group of companies includes supplies of Korean, German and Italian equipment for the Ryazan Radio Plant. The state-owned enterprise is one of the largest suppliers of radio communications for the Russian Ministry of Defense. They also make command and staff vehicles for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Russian National Guard . At the end of 2019, OSTEK updated an entire workshop at this enterprise and created “smart workplaces” for 66 employees. And against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, the radio plant switched to working in three shifts .

OSTEK was also noted for the modernization of buildings of the Russian corporation Kometa. After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this enterprise came under EU sanctions as a developer of reconnaissance systems, rocket weapons and missile systems for the Russian army. So, the business of Russians Alexander Razorenov and Vadim Garshin has grown into a dozen companies actively working for the Russian military industry .

This became possible, among other things, thanks to companies with Belarusian roots, through which OSTEK imported modern equipment for the production of electronic components to Russia.

Belarusian roots of Russian supplies

At first glance, the key supplier of cargo for OSTEK is the Polish company Inter-Trans. It is located in Siedlce near the Belarusian border and is completely controlled by the German company BMA Spedition. Since the mid-90s, this logistics company has specialized in the delivery of goods from the EU to the CIS countries.

Until recently, the main owner of BMA Spedition was Belarusian businessman Evgeniy Kostyuk with a share of 76%. Another 13.85% belonged to the BelMagistralAvtoTrans enterprise, which is controlled by the Belarusian government. Evgeny Kostyuk himself was the director of BelMagistralAvtoTrans.

In 2021 and 2022, companies from the OSTEK group imported equipment for the production of semiconductors and microcircuits worth more than $20 million into Russia, according to customs data. Of this amount , more than $8 million occurred after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine . Such equipment can be used in the military industry. The countries of its origin in customs declarations are the EU countries, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and the USA.

Singapore and South Korea limited the supply of military and dual-use goods to Russia back in March 2022. But in 2023, the sanctions became more widespread. In January, Japan limited the export of dual-use goods to Russia. In February, the EU and the USA prohibit the export of equipment for the production of semiconductors and microcircuits to Russia, and in May the US government also imposes sanctions on the OSTEK group of companies and its beneficiaries Alexander Razorenov and Vadim Garshin. In a press release, the US Ministry of Finance stated that OSTEK supplies foreign microelectronics and production equipment for the Russian military-industrial complex .

Inter-Trans, BMA Spedition and their beneficiary Evgeniy Kostyuk were also blacklisted as European partners of the OSTEK group of companies. They made hundreds of deliveries of electronic components and other goods intended for the OSTEK group of companies, including from the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the American government argued for sanctions.

“All deliveries were official with the permission of the German, Polish and Italian sides. It’s just that one of the final recipients of the equipment was included in the sanctions list, and we are together with him as a transport company in this supply chain. This shit wasn't our fault. We didn’t do anything illegal,” a BMA Spedition spokesman said. He refused to give his name.

At the same time, as we found out thanks to OCCRP, after the introduction of American sanctions, the German company prudently changed owners . Evgeny Kostyuk transferred his share in BMA Spedition to his wife and daughter, and BelMagistralAvtoTrans withdrew from the owners. And recently the company changed its name to TRANS-BRIDGE Logistics.

But in fact, a year before the introduction of large-scale sanctions, while the war was going on in Ukraine, the Belarusian government, through BelMagistralAvtoTrans, and Belarusian Evgeniy Kostyuk supplied Russia with equipment for the military industry.

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Replacement of personnel

But even after the introduction of large-scale sanctions, supplies to OSTEK continued. The EU banned the export of equipment for the production of semiconductors and microcircuits to Belarus only in August last year. While these restrictions were not in effect, OSTEK transported modern equipment to Russia through other companies.

WHY DO THEY DELIVERY VIA BELARUS?

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According to the calculations of the Castellum project. Ai, 12 times fewer restrictions were introduced against Belarus than against Russia - just over 1.4 thousand sanctions.

At the same time, Russia and Belarus form a single economic space, so goods imported into Belarus freely end up in Russia. Russian and Belarusian importers take advantage of this loophole. This was well demonstrated by our previous investigation into how European luxury cars enter Russia through Belarus, bypassing sanctions.

One of them is the Belarusian company Tefida, which is located in an inconspicuous office in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Minsk, just two kilometers from the Minsk ring road and fifteen kilometers from the highway to Moscow. For more than ten years, Tefida has been selling spare parts for road construction equipment, but the war in Ukraine has opened up new opportunities.

According to customs data, from March to August 2023, Tefida, on behalf of the Kazakh company KBR-Technologies, supplied equipment for the production of electronic components worth $5 million to the OSTEK group and related companies. There was also equipment from the German ERSA, the Czech PBT, and the Singaporean NUTEK. For example, in the customs declaration we found a workstation NUTEK NTM 530WSL 1000 and an automatic machine Nutek NTM 410L 500. These are the models that OSTEK-SMT must supply to the Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics under a contract as part of the modernization of production.

In 2022, Tefida, on behalf of the Kazakh company KBR-Technologies, already supplied equipment to OSTEK, but the volumes were much smaller - only six batches worth 700 thousand dollars.

Tefida is owned by Belarusian Marina Kosmach, and the company is managed by her brother, Alexander Shibko. The Kazakh company KBR-Technologies appeared in Petropavlovsk shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine - in May 2022. The company has no website, no email, no phone numbers. But thanks to our colleagues from the Kazakh publication Vlast, we managed to find out that KBR-Technologies is connected with the key owner of BMA Spedition, Olga Hettikh. She is the daughter of the ex-director of the Belarusian state-owned BelMagistralAvtoTrans and the former main beneficiary of Inter-Trans, Evgeniy Kostyuk. The same one that supplied the Russian OSTEK with European equipment until this company came under sanctions.

The connection is as follows: Olga Hettikh is the main owner of the Smolensk company Mirtrans. In Kazakhstan, this company established a subsidiary, KBR-Trans. The company is run by a certain Zhanat Ibraev. He is also the co-founder of KBR-Technology.

The KBR-Trans office is located at the address to which the domain name of the KBR-SMT companyis registered . But we did not find such a company in the Kazakh register. But information about it is on the website of the European office of NUTEK. KBR-SMT is listed there as a Kazakh dealer of a Singapore company. It was NUTEK equipment that, on behalf of KBR-Technology, went to Russia in circumvention of sanctions.

The participation of the KBR-Technologies company in this chain is not accidental. The fact is that Kazakhstan is not subject to Western sanctions. To ward off the suspicions of European customs authorities, suppliers register the goods to a company from the same Petropavlovsk, but the cargo does not reach there, but goes through Minsk and is ultimately unloaded in Moscow . This scheme is called false transit . Lithuanian customs has repeatedly caught sanctioned cargo that was delivered to Russia in this way.

From whom is the demand?

Manufacturers of PBT and ERSA deny supplying their equipment to Russia in circumvention of sanctions. The German company assured that after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, it canceled all orders from Russia and immediately stopped deliveries. “We stopped this business, realizing that we were leaving some good customers and losing good turnover,” Rainer Krauss, executive vice president of ERSA GmbH, wrote to us.

However, according to him, now five Chinese manufacturers are copying ERSA equipment, and these machines are coming to Russia through various transit routes. “In early October [2023], when I attended the Nepcon exhibition in Shenzhen, Chinese manufacturers were delighted with the excellent business with Russia. The market has been occupied by Chinese manufacturers,” Krauss said.

NUTEK did not respond to the request. BMA Spedition refused to contact Olga Hettich. The lawyer forbade giving comments to the media while the sanctions proceedings are ongoing. The head of OSTEK-SMT, Evgeny Lipkin, did not respond to calls or requests. The head of KBR-Trans and co-owner of KBR-Technology Zhanat Ibraev declined to comment.

The owner of Tefida, Marina Kosmach, agreed to meet with us. After the 2020 protests in Belarus, she left her homeland due to the threat of criminal prosecution and received refugee status in Lithuania. She said that she did not know what the company was doing. “You opened America for me,” Kosmach said about the supply of equipment to Russia. According to her, she remains the nominal owner of the company, but her brother runs the business.

We reached Alexander Shibko by phone. He first denied that Tefida was involved in supplying sanctioned equipment to Russia, but then said that the company dealt with the equipment. “I didn’t sign any invoices for any authorization; they also cleared customs themselves. We were simply a temporary storage warehouse. We didn’t deliver anything,” Shibko said.

But we have documents at our disposal according to which KBR-Technologies authorized Tefida not only to store cargo in Belarus, but also to deliver it to Russia. For its services, Tefida received more than 82 thousand euros from KBR-Technology.

While Western equipment was on its way to Russia, the Ukrainian military shot down Russian Orion and Forpost drones. Some photos show that aerial bombs developed at the Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics were suspended from them . This is not the only military-industrial enterprise that OSTEK equipped with modern equipment, including with the help of Belarusian intermediaries.

“The Forpost and Orion drones are targets that can be shot down by our air defenses, which is why Russia rarely uses them now. But it is obvious that those countries that cooperate with the aggressor will supply them with weapons, ammunition, and ammunition. Russia does not have enough of its reserves, and Lukashenko’s regime is on Putin’s hook,” said Yuri Ignat, speaker of the Ukrainian Air Force.

At the beginning of the war, the Lukashenko regime provided the territory of Belarus for a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because of this, the occupation of Bucha became possible, where the Russian military massacred civilians . Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly assured that Belarusian soldiers will not enter the territory of Ukraine. However, during the war, Belarusians help equip the Russian military machine with modern equipment. Last year, Russia imported dual-use goods with a high risk of use in the military industry worth more than $27 million through Belarus, according to customs data.

Cover: Lida Kurnosova

Illustrations: Dmitry Osinnikov

Infographic: El

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