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A Russian fighter takes off, in a file image. Ministry of Defense
Agents from the General Information Commissioner of the National Police and the Customs Surveillance Service arrested two women, aged 39 and 35, on March 15 in Gipuzkoa, accused of smuggling defense material for their alleged relationship with a business plot that tried to get to Russia the necessary components for the manufacture of the cabins of its military training planes, as reported by the Ministry of the Interior on Wednesday.
The arrested women, one of Ukrainian nationality and the other of Russia, had worked for a company domiciled in Irún for three years that allegedly formed part of an international smuggling network dedicated to circumventing the sanctions imposed by the European Union (EU) on the Moscow regime since 2014 for the invasion of the Crimean peninsula,
according to sources close to the investigation.
The head of Investigating Court 5 of the National Court, Santiago Pedraz, has ordered the imprisonment of the detainee of Ukrainian nationality, considered one of the ringleaders of the network.
The one baptized as Operation Chelico started in June 2021, when the current invasion of Ukraine had not taken place, but there were already EU sanctions against the Government of Vladimir Putin, including the ban on exporting dual-use products and technology to Russia. , drone engines, weapons, ammunition, military vehicles and paramilitary equipment.
At one of the meetings of the Inter-Ministerial Regulatory Board for Foreign Trade in Defense and Dual-Use Material, an organization with which all companies that intend to market with foreign countries any type of component likely to be used in the defense must register and request authorization. weapons manufacturing,
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The investigations, described as "very complex" by sources close to the investigation, determined that this company based in Irún was, in reality, one more piece of "a framework that had designed a sophisticated customs engineering, at an international level, to carry out operations in which it was declared that the destination of the goods were countries not subject to an embargo, with Russia really being their final destination”, as explained by Interior.
These types of smuggling operations are not new.
According to a study by the Royal United Services Institute think tank, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, more than 450 foreign-made components – most of them made by US companies – have been found in 27 Russian pieces of equipment destroyed or captured by the Ukrainian forces.
One of the women now arrested and her husband, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, ran from this company "a supply chain of military aeronautical material, evading the controls established by current legislation on this matter and, therefore, committing a crime of smuggling." ”, adds the note.
The material never physically passed through Spain, but the company's activity made it possible to camouflage both the final destination of the components and blur the trail of payments with the help of other companies based in tax havens.
The arrests were precipitated on March 15 after investigators detected that a shipment of material that the Russian arms industry, greatly affected by the embargo, needs to manufacture fighters, was about to materialize from another European country that the Interior has not specified. of training.
Specifically, glass and other components used in the construction of the cabins of these military aircraft.
With the documentation seized at the home of one of the detainees, the police try to reconstruct other similar smuggling operations already carried out or that were underway in which the Gipuzkoan company could have participated, in addition to "proceeding to the full identification, location and detention of other individuals involved in these events," according to Interior.