Dutch authorities arrested three people earlier this month as part of a multinational investigation into an international smuggling network that allegedly worked to evade EU-wide sanctions on Russia.
The Netherlands’ Fiscal Information and Investigation Service said Tuesday it had detained three people, all aged in their fifties, from Diemen and The Hague. The arrests were made on January 9, with raids also carried out in Estonia, Latvia, Germany and Canada.
Two of the suspects were administrators of a Dutch-registered company, set up in 2017, that exported “technological and laboratory equipment” with potential “military purposes” to Russia, the Eurojust agency, which helped coordinate the investigation, said in a statement.
The EU has slapped Russia with wave after wave of sanctions following the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but the measures have been criticized for allowing too many loopholes.
Last October, a Dutch court sentenced a Russian businessman to 18 months in jail for exporting electronic goods to Russia, saying sanctions evasion was his “revenue model.”
