The European Union (EU) updated its list of sanctioned companies and individuals on Monday. With its 14th package, the EU expanded the blacklist including a company from Kazakhstan, Da Group 22, which participated in a scheme to supply microchips to Russia.
Da Group 22 was registered in March 2022 in Astana. It later changed its founders. According to an investigation by Vlast, IStories, OCCRP, and Der Spiegel last year, the company was involved in a scheme to supply microchips from Germany to Russia.
In January 2023, customs data showed, Stek, a Russian company that trades with the country's military-industrial complex, received a shipment of 2,598 microchips Da Group 22. The same month, Da Group 22 had itself received a shipment of exactly the same size from a German company called Elix-St, based in Stuttgart.
Da Group 22's German partners explained that they were sending components for video recorders, and the company itself presented itself as an electronics assembler.
The EU's inclusion of Da Group 22 on its sanctions list is aimed to prevent Russia from obtaining the dual-use goods it needs to continue its war in Ukraine.
Last week, Japan included another Kazakhstan-registered company in its own sanctions list. On June 12, the US Treasury Department also updated its sanctions list and included KBR Technologii, an Almaty-registered company linked to a "false transit" scheme aimed to circumvent sanctions against Russia.
Поддержите журналистику, которой доверяют.
