Finland has handed down one of the harshest sentences for circumventing sanctions against Russia

The South Karelia Court in Finland found the owner of the logistics company Idän liikennevälitys IL guilty of gross violation of the European Union sanctions regime and sentenced him to 3 years and 8 months in prison.

According to Finnish media, the verdict was announced on July 1 and became one of the most high-profile decisions regarding the circumvention of sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation.

According to the investigation, in 2022–2023, the company organized the export of 164 trucks and trailers from Finland to Russia, using a scheme with formal recipients in Turkey and Kazakhstan.

However, as the court established, these companies were in fact only an intermediate link, and the final destination of the equipment was Russia. At the same time, such deliveries did not have transit status and directly contradicted the EU sanctions restrictions.

In addition to the prison sentence, the court ordered the company to recover approximately 600,000 euros in illegally obtained profits.

It was also ordered to confiscate property worth approximately 6 million euros.

The defendant pleaded not guilty and claimed that he did not know about the real route of the trucks, believing that the buyers were Kazakh companies.

However, the court concluded that it was he who played a key role in building the supply scheme, without which its implementation would have been impossible.

The court emphasized that this is one of the first such sentences in Finland, and the imposed sentence is close to the maximum possible for this type of crime.

Experts note that this decision may become an important precedent for strengthening control over compliance with the European Union’s sanctions policy towards Russia.