The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has published its findings that several firms have violated EU sanctions by falsely presenting Russian and Belarusian plywood, pellets, and other timber products as originating from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Lithuanian authorities have submitted the evidence against nine Lithuanian companies following and the Lithuanian State Consumer Rights Protection Authority (SCRPA) initiated its own investigation in early 2023 into 95 companies engaged in timber imports from non-EU countries. Additionally, Lithuania discovered evidence of Turkey being used as a means to evade timber sanctions. The case adds to the growing instances of OCCRP’s reports exposing sanction evasion in the Baltic States and Poland.

Lithuania has already cracked down on suspicious imports of fertilisers, petrochemicals, and other goods believed to be connected to mechanisms for sanction evasion after Siena and the Belarusian Investigative Center uncovered a significant scheme for importing fertilisers into the EU from the sanctioned Belarussian Grodno Azot company, using the Hrodna Executive Committee’s ‘Grikom Company’ as the front. The ruse was discovered after Viktar Rusak, who was elected to the House of Representatives while using an address at the Grodno Azot plant, became director of Grikom the day after it was founded.  Suspicions were confirmed when a lorry driver was intercepted by protestors in Lithuania and admitted to having loaded his urea cargo at the Grodno Azot Plant.

The OCCRP was itself has been labelled as „undesirable organisation” in Russia, meaning that Russians can be punished for maintaining ties with it – a distinction it shares with, among others, the Association of Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe, Greenpeace International and Poland’s Congress of People’s Deputies.