By Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI (Reuters) – A court in Finland said on Thursday it had found a French chief executive of two Finnish companies guilty of exporting military equipment to Kazakhstan via Russia and of breaching sanctions set by the European Union due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Kyiv has been pressing its allies to tighten sanctions on Russia and close export control loopholes, saying that Moscow is still able to import military goods for its war in Ukraine.
The District Court of Ita-Uusimaa gave Gabriel Temin, a French national born in Soviet-era Estonia, a suspended prison sentence of nine months for the illegal export of defence equipment to Kazakhstan via Russia, and for breaching military export rules, it said in a statement.
As the chief executive of two Finland-registered shipping agent companies, Siberica Ltd and Luminor Ltd, Temin was responsible for the operations that included the trade of Taiwanese drone-blocking equipment to Kazakhstan, the court said. Temin, 44, denied the charges.
The court said the discussions between Temin and the clients on the Telegram messaging app, presented by the prosecutor in court, were not sufficient evidence to prove that the final destination of the equipment would have been Russia instead of Kazakhstan, but the export of defence equipment would have required a permission in any case.
“Gabriel Temin has, in any case, committed a crime by exporting the supplies from Finland,” the court said in a statement.
The two companies were not immediately available for comment when Reuters attempted to contact them.
Temin said in court he had ordered drone blocking equipment worth 385,000 euros ($420,000) on the internet from Taiwanese company Drones Vision on two occasions in 2023 upon a request from a client, Bassire Group, without knowing he was ordering defence equipment that required an export permit.
Under separate charges, Temin was accused of 31 cases of breaching defence equipment export rules, including a case in which Finland’s Customs suspected nearly 3,500 drones exported by Temin and Luminor ended up in Russia instead of Turkey, which was cited as their destination.
Of the 31 cases, the prosecutor dropped 4 while the court found Temin guilty of 2 and dismissed 25, including the drone case for lack of evidence.
In the two cases in which Temin was found guilty, the court said he falsified the destination of sanctioned German tools by reporting they were headed to Kazakhstan instead of St. Petersburg in Russia, where Siberica’s own documents showed they eventually ended up.
($1 = 0.9176 euros)
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen; Editing by Ros Russell)
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