VIENNA, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Austria has broken up a scheme in which a Vienna-based company supplied equipment used to make engines \u200cfor Russian missiles and fighter jets, in breach of European Union \u200csanctions, the interior ministry said on Monday. <\/p>\n
The company falsified end-user certificates to supply the equipment \u200bunder sanctions, including special metalworking tools and CNC machines, which can be used to make parts and tools, the ministry said in a statement. It added that the 28-year-old Belarusian head of the company was arrested in May. <\/p>\n
The \u200ccompany, which the ministry did \u2060not name, concealed its shipments through a network of shell companies in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, \u2060Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, South Korea, Poland and Lithuania, the ministry said. <\/p>\n
“It is unacceptable for high-precision European technology to be diverted towards the production of cruise missiles and \u200bair-defence systems,” \u200bAustria’s junior minister in charge of \u200bintelligence, Joerg Leichtfried, said. <\/p>\n
“We will \u200ccontinue to take decisive action … against those actors who attempt to circumvent legal bans on supporting the Russian arms industry.” <\/p>\n
The equipment was supplied to companies affiliated with Russian state industrial conglomerate Rostec, the ministry said. Investigators’ latest findings indicate the goods were used to make military equipment, including engines for \u200ccruise missiles and fighter jets. <\/p>\n
The Russian embassy \u200bin Vienna declined to comment. Rostec did \u200bnot immediately respond to a \u200brequest for comment. <\/p>\n
On the same day the chief suspect was \u200carrested, authorities seized CNC machines and \u200bspecialised tools worth \u200babout \u20ac140,000 ($162,000), the ministry said. The suspect, who was not named, remains in custody while the investigation continues. <\/p>\n
Evidence seized during four raids in August \u200blast year indicated that \u200cindustrial goods worth more than \u20ac3.3 million had been delivered to \u200bRussian arms manufacturers since 2022, the ministry added. <\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8659 euros) <\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bFrancois Murphy. Editing by Mark Potter) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VIENNA, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Austria has broken up a scheme in which a Vienna-based company supplied equipment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3782,3168,14,363,2471,2842],"class_list":["post-6648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-austria","tag-cruise-missiles","tag-defence-industry","tag-european-union","tag-fighter-jets","tag-russian-missiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}