Brussels court convicts three over Russia sanctions evasion scheme
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E-mailBRUSSELS, June 11 (Reuters) - A Brussels court on Thursday sentenced three men over a scheme to circumvent EU sanctions by exporting restricted goods to Russia through intermediary countries, finding they operated a criminal organisation to sustain trade with the Russian defence sector.
• Belgian rulings usually anonymise defendants using initials, but media identified the main accused as Victor Labin, a Belgian-Russian national, which his lawyer Stanislas Eskenazi confirmed.
• Labin was sentenced to five years in prison and an €80,000 fine, with part of the sentence suspended.
• L.R., who was absent and believed to be abroad, received six years and an €80,000 fine, with the court ordering his immediate arrest.
• P.I. was given a three-year prison sentence fully suspended for five years and an €8,000 fine.
• The ruling said Labin and Brussels-based entrepreneur P.I. organised a network between 2023 and 2025 to channel goods via entities in Hong Kong, Kazakhstan and elsewhere, concealing the Russian end-destination.
• It found the group used front companies, falsified documents and misdeclared shipments to evade export controls and customs rules.
• The court upheld charges of criminal organisation, illegal exports of sanctioned goods, including rare earths, an explosive detector and a defence-related machine, along with forgery and customs fraud.
• Prosecutors said the trade ultimately supplied Russian entities tied to the military-industrial sector, despite EU sanctions imposed after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
• Eskenazi said the court had handed down an unusually harsh sentence, suggesting it may have been influenced by his client's Russian background.
(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout; Editing by Ros Russell)
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