EU goods worth at least $1 bn vanish in Russia ‘ghost trade’
20:37
More than $1 billion of EU exports targeted by sanctions have disappeared in transit to Russia’s economic partners, a flow of “ghost trade” that Western officials believe has helped sustain Vladimir Putin’s wartime economy.
Public data analyzed by the Financial Times found that only about half of a $2 billion sample of controlled dual-use items shipped from the EU reached their stated destinations in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia. These goods, which are deemed by the EU to have potential uses for military or intelligence services and are subject to export controls, may have entered Russia directly from the EU under the pretense that they were only passing through.
A disproportionate share of the ghost exports, which never reached their official destination, left the EU from Baltic countries bordering Russia and Belarus.
(FT)
