Russians have found a way to buy US chips in circumvention of sanctions-Bloomberg
Kyiv • UNN
Russian distributors use the Texas Instruments API to order chips through third countries. During the year, orders were made for 6 6 million, of which 4 4 million was for military companies.
Suppliers of the Russian military-industrial complex have found a way to circumvent the sanctions and order chips from the American company Texas Instruments even after the introduction of sanctions. This is reported by Bloomberg, writes UNN.
Details
The publication notes that some Russian distributors have integrated information from the Texas Instruments (TI) online store called TI store into their trading platforms.
Their Russian customers see information about semiconductor stocks and product prices, and then place orders that are executed and delivered through companies outside of Russia.
It is noted that sites were mainly used for orders getchips.ru and altchips.ru, blocked in the US and Europe, but available in Russia. The local selection of TE Products coincides with the information that the company's customers receive from its branded online store.
As the interlocutors of the publication suggest, this means that Russian distributors have gained access to the proprietary application programming interface, or API – technical coordinates that allow software to communicate and exchange data with each other.
For example, one major Russian distributor processed more than 4,000 orders for hundreds of thousands of TI products worth about.6 million from August 2023 to August 2024.
Of these, orders for almost 4 4 million were intended for Russian military companies. Before entering Russia, goods passed through Hong Kong or other countries.
Among the thousands of orders that Bloomberg found in internal Russian documents, 287 orders were marked as "canceled", indicating that some customers either changed their minds or the distributor was unable to fulfill these orders.
The publication also notes that the Russian distributor applied a 40% mark-up to TI prices, which, according to Bloomberg's interlocutors, was done in order to cover the entire delivery and payment process.
