From France to Turkey, how a Russian group supplies its army with European equipment

In April 2023, Attax, a small French company based in the Paris region and specializing in the manufacture of spare parts, was approached by a new customer. It was Enütek Makina, a Turkish company based in Istanbul, which wanted to order aircraft seat attachment systems. The deal was quickly closed and the order was shipped to Turkey, to be passed on to another company specializing in seat repair.

At least, that’s what Enütek Makina told its supplier. In fact, according to customs data consulted and cross-checked by Le Monde, Enütek Makina shipped these components to Russia in July 2023. The declared recipient? Aerospace Systems Design Bureau, a subsidiary of the Russian group Promtech, which was placed under European sanctions in December 2022 for its links with the Russian military-industrial complex. Franck Martin, the head of Attax, said he was stunned. “Promtech was our customer from 2021. But we stopped all collaboration as soon as the war in Ukraine began, in February 2022,” he asserted. He swore that he had no idea that his new Turkish buyer might serve as a conduit for Russia.

This is far from an isolated example. Enütek Makina has exported over €7 million worth of equipment to Russia since the beginning of 2023, mainly destined for entities of the Promtech group, according to our investigation, carried out in collaboration with the German media outlets NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung, as well as Trap Aggressor, a team from the Ukrainian anti-corruption NGO Statewatch that investigates Moscow’s war efforts. Some of these deliveries may have breached European and US sanctions against Russia and benefited its military.

International sanctions

Promtech is a large Russian industrial company specializing in the development and production of components for the aviation, space, land and marine industries. Some of its activities are civil, but it also has customers within the Russian military-industrial complex.

Until 2022, Promtech had no difficulty in sourcing from European manufacturers. But the sanctions imposed on Russia following the large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, have made its operations more difficult. To date, 15 of the group’s entities have been targeted by the European Union and the United States, notably for supplying various components (semiconductors, electrical connectors, alloys, cables, radars and so on) to the Russian military air force.

Many products imported by Promtech may also be subject to European restrictions of various kinds. Some are directly prohibited from being exported from Europe to Russia because they are military equipment or advanced technologies. Others are dual-use goods that can be used for both civilian and military purposes and require prior export authorization. Still, others are part of “the common high-priority items,” a shortlist of goods that are subject to extra vigilance, as they have been identified in Russian war equipment in Ukraine. These include components found in tanks and shells.

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Publish date : 2024-07-18 16:01:12

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