AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch court has sentenced a Russian citizen to 18 months in prison and fined his company 200,000 euros ($211,000) for breaching trade sanctions against Russia which the European Union imposed over the war in Ukraine.
The 56-year-old man, named Dmitri K by prosecutors, was tried in absentia and is believed to have fled to Russia after being released from custody pending his trial last year.
In a rare ruling, the court said the man had been trading in microchips and other electronic goods for 6 years and had been fully aware of the sanctions against Russia.
The man was in charge of a company that channelled "dual-use" goods - which can serve both civilian and military purposes - via foreign countries to firms in Russia to bypass EU restrictions, it said.
To do so, the man forged invoices and statements about the end user of the products to make it look like they were shipped to the Maldives and in some cases even to a non-existent company in Ukraine, the district court in Rotterdam said.
"With his acts he has knowingly and deliberately circumvented European Union sanctions and undermined national and international law," the court said. "Since the sanctions were imposed, avoiding them basically became his business model."
The European Union, where the Netherlands is one of 27 member states, has imposed 11 rounds of sanctions to punish Russia since Moscow launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022.
They include trade, defence and financial restrictions, as well as a blacklist of some 1,800 people and entities involved in the war, which Russia unleashed on its neighbour, a former Soviet state that now wants to integrate with the West.
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(Reporting by Bart Meijer and Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Christina Fincher)
