Kazakhstani company caught in media investigation on sanctions evasion
A Kazakhstani company has been supplying Belarus with hydrochloric acid — a critical material used in microchip production, which in turn is utilized in Russian weaponry — according to a recent report from the Belarusian Investigative Center (BIC), an independent media outlet.
«In 2021, hydrochloric acid with a purity of 99.999% was supplied to Integral (the Belarusian state-owned company) by the German company UrSeCo Handels GmbH & Co. KG. But a new delivery scheme emerged in 2022, when sanctions banned the chemical from entering Russia. The supplies passed through Poland and Turkey to Kazakhstan before reaching Belarus,» the BIC report said.
Journalists note that the recipient of the acid in Kazakhstan is United Trading Group, a local company. Despite its imposing name, the firm has only one employee and was established just weeks after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. It supplied the high-purity acid to Russia through the companies Siltron and Elektonsnab.
According to Kazakhstan’s official government portal Egov.kz, the company was founded by Alimzhan Bekov. The company’s listed activities are vaguely described as «wholesale trade in a wide range of goods» without any further specifics.
«Coincidences in the dates and volumes of successive sanction-evading shipments from Germany to Russia along the chain we have described may indicate that the same German acid was coming from Germany to Russia. In particular, on June 9, 2022, Germany’s UrSeCo Handels delivered 860 kg of high-purity hydrochloric acid produced by Germany’s Wacker Chemie AG to Kazakhstan’s United Trading Group. In the same month, United Trading Group delivered a consignment of the same German-made substance of precisely the same weight to the Russian company Elektronsnab. Elektronsnab supplied German acid to Integral until the end of 2023,» the report stated.
In October 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on 275 individuals and companies across 17 countries, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Switzerland, China and India. Among the sanctioned entities was the Kazakhstani company Kazstanex, penalized for supplying goods to Russia.
Earlier, another Kazakhstani company, Da Group 22, was also sanctioned under the European Union’s 14th sanctions package for assisting Russia.
