The Hamburg prosecutor's office has indicted five men involved in the illegal supply of Siemens gas turbines to Crimea. According to WirtschaftsWoche, a total of four Germans and one Swiss facilitated the sale of four gas turbines to a Russian state-owned company eight years ago, knowing that they would eventually end up in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, UNN reports .
Details
According to the prosecutor's office, the turbines worth 111 million euros were exported to St. Petersburg through the port of Hamburg between November 2015 and January 2016.
Instead of installing them in southern Russia, as agreed, the Russian customer Siemens installed them at two new power plants in Sevastopol and Simferopol, which provide energy to the occupied Crimea. It is noted that the defendants were aware of this destination, which violated the contract.
It is noted that the men acted with the intention of "receiving indirect benefits through variable salary components from both the sale of gas turbines and the promised contract for the maintenance of the sold gas turbines". One can only guess whether they really assumed that the Siemens supply to Crimea would go unnoticed.
Context
Siemens said it was cooperating with the investigation and did not know about the sale of turbines to Crimea. One of the five detainees still works for Siemens and is not expected to be fired, a company spokesman said, citing the presumption of innocence. All five defendants deny their guilt, Reuters reports.
In March 2022, German Siemens AG left Russia due to sanctions and stopped supplying products. Since 2021, the company's Russian structure has been in the process of reorganization in the form of a spin-off. In February, it was renamed from Siemens LLC to Systems LLC.