Kazakhstani company brings a case against the US

The U.S. government has accused the company of illegally supplying weapons from North Korea to Russia / Photo: Shutterstock

The U.S. has imposed sanctions against three companies from Kazakhstan, Russia and Slovakia, which cooperated with North Korea, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control reported.

What happened? The U.S. has imposed sanctions against the Kazakhstani company Defense Engineering, Russian Verus and Slovakian Versor S.R.O.

Why has the U.S. put these companies on the sanction list? The U.S. government is accusing these companies of illegal attempts to supply weaponry from North Korea to Russia.

What do we know about the top managers of these companies? Ashot Mkrtychev, owner or CEO of these companies, is a Slovakian national. He has been on the sanction list since March of this year.

«Through his negotiations with DPRK and Russian officials, he organized potential plans to transfer over two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions to Russia in exchange for a range of goods, including raw materials and commodities, to the DPRK. Mkrtychev is the president of Versor, the founder and owner of Verus, and the sole director of Defense Engineering. Mkrtychev has coordinated with DPRK procurement officials and used Versor to conduct negotiations with companies abroad,» the U.S. Department of the Treasury said in a statement.

What do we know about Defense Engineering? According to Egov.kz, Defense Engineering LLC was registered in Astana in 2018. Its official purpose is trading with a wide range of goods in marketplaces of more than 2,000 square meters of floor size, including food distribution centers. According to open sources, Ashot Mkrtychev has been operating as CEO of this company since 2020.

The context. In November 2022, Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the U.S. National Security Council John Kirby said that North Korea sent artillery munitions to Russia in significant amounts. CNN reported that U.S. intelligence had proof of the supply. In turn, Maria Zakharova, the official spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that this information was false. The North Korean defense ministry didn’t comment on this statement.

Defense Engineering isn’t the only Kazakhstani company that has been put on sanction lists. In July 2023, Ukraine imposed sanctions against two Kazakhstani companies, ITC Astana LLC and Tynys LLC.