On Tuesday, the police in Spain announced that they had seized 13 tonnes of banned chemicals including “possible chemical weapons precursors” bound for Russia, despite sanctions imposed by Moscow due to its invasion of Ukraine.
Police said that they arrested four suspected members who were part of a criminal ring. They believe the gang was trying to circumvent Western sanctions, by illegally supplying chemicals to Russia through a shell firm managed by “citizens with Russian roots”.
In a joint press release, the national police and tax authority stated, “During the investigation, it was proved that internationally sanctioned chemicals, some of which were possible precursors to chemical weapons or nervous agents had been exported using this company structure in the past.”
The statement didn’t specify which chemicals were confiscated in the most recent operation.
The four suspects arrested were from the villages of Sant Feliu de Guixols and Santa Perpetua de Mogoda, which are nearby. The four suspects face charges for a sustained smuggling operation of prohibited goods.
Police said that the Spanish company had developed a sophisticated financial and logistical network to export chemical products sanctioned by international law to Russia.
The company had a Moscow-based subsidiary that received the chemicals. It also used several shell companies to hide the real destination of the goods in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. These were then redirected to Russia.
The European Union has announced that it will crack down on companies that sell dual-use products to Russia through Central Asian countries to circumvent sanctions.
Both the United States and Britain accuse Russia of violating a ban on chemical weapons being used on the battlefields in Ukraine. London has imposed sanctions on troops that it believes were involved.
Russia has denied these accusations repeatedly. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in May that Moscow was bound to its obligations under a treaty banning chemical weapons.
