PARIS (Reuters) - Soon after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, freight shipper Hellmann Worldwide Logistics informed staff at its Moscow business it was pulling out of Russia. Some people who had worked for the German company saw an opportunity.
Before the war, Hellmann's Moscow office had helped Russian industrial firms ship to Russia tools, parts and equipment from the West but, after the invasion, such shipments were heavily restricted by international sanctions. Instead, a Russian-registered firm called Heinrich Tapp Rus (HT Rus) - whose owners at the time included at least two former Hellmann employees - took over the relationship with many of Hellmann's old clients.
HT Rus's website offers clients in Russia "parallel imports", a term widely used to describe shipping goods via third countries such as Turkey or the United Arab Emirates to get around Western sanctions. In its marketing material, the firm adopted a corporate motto: "New reality - new opportunity."
Using Russian tax documents for 2023 and 2024, and official corporate registries in Russia and Germany, Reuters found that HT Rus has been providing services to Russian clients placed under international sanctions for supporting the Kremlin's war machine.
The firm, which reported revenues of about $17.5 million last year, has been working with Russian customers including: Aurus, the firm that makes Vladimir Putin's limousines; subsidiaries of Kamaz, a maker of Russian military trucks; and Tyumen Battery Factory, a supplier of batteries for an arms manufacturer, the Russian tax documents showed.
Reuters was not able to determine if HT Rus was offering "parallel import" services to those firms, because the tax documents did not reveal the nature of the services provided.
Kamaz said the information in the tax documents was either wrong, or they had no knowledge of it, but did not provide specific details. Aurus and Tyumen Battery Factory did not respond to requests for comment.
HT Rus is one of many intermediaries offering customers help with skirting Western sanctions and using shipments via third countries to provide industrial goods to Russia. That activity is only a sanctions violation if the goods are covered by sanctions, or the intermediary works with sanctioned entities. HT Rus stands out because very few cases have emerged publicly where European Union citizens have been found doing business, directly or via a wholly owned subsidiary, with sanctioned entities, a Reuters analysis of sanction violation cases showed.
HT Rus is owned by a German-registered firm that has a German businessman as its shareholder and, until last month, had another German as a director, corporate records show.
Under U.S. and EU laws governing sanctions on Russia, any company that does business with a Russian firm on an international blacklist is violating sanctions. For a Western firm proved to have influenced the sanctions-busting activity, that could result in being sanctioned itself - making it hard to do business - or in being prosecuted.
Hellmann Worldwide Logistics said it has nothing to do with the activities of HT Rus or the people who run it. Reuters found no evidence Hellmann violated sanctions.
"In 2022, everything that was sanctioned goods ... this whole business was transferred to Heinrich Tapp," said a former Hellmann executive in Russia, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter.
HT Rus is wholly owned by a German-registered firm called HT East Management, according to Russian corporate records as of June 28 this year. A majority stake in HT East was bought in June 2022 by Alexander Roedeler, a businessman based in Dusseldorf, according to Germany's corporate register.
Between 2017 and 2022, Roedeler worked in Germany for Hellmann's eastern Europe unit that dealt with Russia, according to a Hellmann statement provided to Reuters.
Roedeler now works for German investment group HTP Maximum, whose managing director is Patrick Nathe, according to the firm's website. Nathe is a German former Hellmann manager who left the company in July 2022. Until March 2023, HT East Management and HTP Maximum had the same Duesseldorf address listed in Germany's corporate register. HTP Maximum, according to its own website, between 2017 and 2021 held a stake in a German firm called Henrich Tapp GmbH, which was the majority owner of HT East Management until German corporate records showed in June 2022 it divested the holding.
Reuters found no other corporate or other relationship between HTP Maximum and HT East Management. Nathe told Reuters he was not involved in HT Rus or its parent company.
German-Russian dual national Vladimir Klaus, who worked for Hellman in Moscow until it closed its offices there, was a director of HT East Management until June 12 this year, when German corporate records show he ceased to have that role. Klaus did not respond to Reuters questions before or after he stopped being a director.
Reuters did not find evidence that HT Rus' owner, HT East Management, did business directly with any sanctioned company.
The managing director of HT Rus, Ruslan Shakirov, said he dealt directly with Roedeler as the current director of the German parent company. The parent company "is fully informed about the company's (HT Rus) activities, takes part and gives corresponding instructions."
Contacted by Reuters, Roedeler said: "I have no knowledge of the details of Heinrich Tapp Rus' business activities, nor do I have any influence whatsoever on its operations."
German customs, which oversees sanctions enforcement, said it could not comment on specific cases. Speaking generally, it said in some circumstances, a German company could be held legally liable for sanctions violations by its foreign subsidiary.
It is prohibited for EU-based parent companies to use their Russian subsidiaries to circumvent sanctions, for instance by delegating to them decisions that run counter to the sanctions or by approving such decisions by the Russian subsidiary, according to the European Commission's guidance on Russia sanctions.
SANCTIONED CLIENTS
Reuters was able to establish the Russian clients HT Rus worked with by reviewing documents the company filed with the Russian tax authorities, where they must account for all their revenues and identify the source.
The documents relate to the second and the fourth quarters of 2023, and the first quarter of 2024. The documents do not disclose what services HT Rus rendered to its clients.
Over those three periods HT Rus provided services, worth $172,324 to Aurus, a Russian state-owned firm that manufactures the luxury sedan of the same name. Reuters could not establish what those services were.
Since 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin started using the limousine instead of his usual Mercedes, and he gifted two of the cars to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year. The two leaders took turns to drive each other in an Aurus limousine when Putin visited North Korea last month.
Aurus was included on a U.S. sanctions list in February on the grounds its parent company is essential for the national defense and security of Russia. The sanctions designation means that any company doing business with the firm is liable to itself be placed under U.S. sanctions, which would freeze the firm out of the international banking system, discouraging partners from doing business with it for fear of themselves being sanctioned.
Seven of the transactions between Aurus and HT Rus, worth $3,773, took place after the date the sanctions were imposed, the documents showed.
HT Rus provided services to a value of $290,725 to two subsidiaries and one joint venture of Kamaz, Russia's biggest truck maker, according to the documents. Here too, Reuters could not establish what those services were.
The three entities all manufacture or supply Kamaz truck parts. The U.S. government sanctioned the truck maker in June 2022, noting its vehicles had been spotted carrying Russian soldiers and missiles during the invasion of Ukraine. Kamaz was added to an EU sanctions blacklist in the same month.
Another HT Rus customer, AO Proton, a maker of optical electronic equipment, was placed under U.S. sanctions in May 2023. It paid Heinrich Tapp $26,156 after the sanctions were imposed, the documents showed. Reuters does not know what services HT Rus provided AO Proton, which did not respond to a request for comment.
In December 2023, the governor of Russia's Oryol region, where Proton has a factory, awarded the firm's boss, Vyacheslav Menshov, a medal to recognize his "help in the Special Military Operation" - the term Russian officials use to describe the war in Ukraine.
Shakirov, the HT Rus managing director, did not respond to a request for comment on this. Menshov, reached via his firm, did not respond to questions about the award.
HT Rus provided $312,000 worth of services - what they were, Reuters could not establish - to a firm called Tyumen Battery Factory, according to the documents, of which about $70,000 was after the battery producer was placed under U.S. sanctions in Dec. 2023. The firm supplies batteries to at least one arms maker, according to its website. Tyumen Battery Factory did not respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. Treasury Department, which oversees U.S. sanctions, declined to comment.
Asked by Reuters about the firm doing business with sanctioned firms, Shakirov declined to comment because he said he could not recall all the company's customers.
"We have lots of customers, we have lots of suppliers, which ship via us," he said.
(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel in Paris, Anton Zverev in London and Maria Tsvetkova in New York. Additional reporting by Polina Nikolskaya and Christian Lowe in London and Mari Saito in Berlin; Editing by Daniel Flynn)
By Tassilo Hummel, Anton Zverev and Maria Tsvetkova
