The little-known British company Mykines Corporation LLP, registered on the outskirts of London, supplied Russia with various equipment and electronics from the sanctions lists after the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In total, the company arranged more than 10,000 deliveries worth $1.2 billion, according to the Financial Times, citing customs declarations.
The company operated before the Russian invasion, supplying the country with consumer electronics: laptops, smartphones, chips, as well as servers and more sophisticated communications equipment. However, after the Russian invasion, the company's business grew several times, and the basis of supplies was the products of Huawei, Intel, AMD, Apple and Samsung, which are prohibited from being imported into Russia due to sanctions. Exports to Russia were not carried out directly, but through an intermediary country – as a rule, it was China, the newspaper notes.
The British newspaper failed to identify those involved in the scheme. The investigation led them to the Ukrainian founder of the company, 53-year-old Vitaly Polyakov. Ukrainian investigators tried to find a person with a similar name in Ukraine, but found only a mining concern worker who refused to talk to reporters. The publication also found a girl who controls the legal entity until August 2022 – she also turned out to be Ukrainian, originally from the same place as Polyakov. She also refused to talk to reporters.
Most of the supplies were destined for the Russian company Maarsala, which the publication calls a close partner of one of the largest distributors of equipment and electronics in Russia – the Merilon company. Representatives of both companies also did not answer questions from the publication. One of Marsala's counterparties was Microcontract, which owns a joint venture with the Engineering Center of Novgorod State University. This center was created in cooperation with Rostec, the largest manufacturer of Russian weapons. Thus, the newspaper notes, there is a real risk that Mykines has long helped the Russian military-industrial complex to circumvent sanctions.
Moreover, customs declarations show that the company continued to supply prohibited goods and equipment even after the imposition of sanctions. The publication claims that there is evidence of forgery in customs declarations: for example, the company sold “paper” from Huawei and New H3C Technologie at a price of $500,000 per kilogram. The publication notes that this case is just one more evidence of a serious vulnerability of the current sanctions regime.