“How to Circumvent U.S. Sanctions on the Supply of Military Electronic Warfare Equipment for the War in Ukraine Using a Verified Crypto Wallet in the EU” is the focus of an investigative article by Skirmantas Malinauskas. The article delves into the methods employed by Russian networks to acquire critical Western weapons technology, examining the agents and channels involved in bypassing sanctions to support the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
We’re pleased to share this piece from Skirmantas Malinauskas, offering valuable insights on how Russians circumvent sanctions imposed after the war.
Our colleagues from Insider recently conducted an investigation into new methods of ‘grey’ importation of dual-use and military goods into Donbass for the Russian army, effectively aiding in the killing of civilians of Ukraine.
In brief, the article exposed schemes of importing high-tech military equipment into Russia for use in electronic warfare on the Ukrainian front in this monstrous war. In other words – it kills civilians.
We were interested in this article about LLC “RM-Invest”, which had previously been involved in a scandal involving sanctions circumvention and ‘grey’ imports for the Russian army.
Among journalists, there are always insider materials or complaints from aggrieved subcontractors who have been ‘thrown under the train’ by their clients. Such news of ingratitude quickly spreads among ‘colleagues in the trade’. Therefore, we immediately remembered the mention of this fly-by-night company in correspondence about cryptocurrency payments for supplied military signal generators and spectrum analysers used in EW (Electronic Warfare) in the Russo-Ukraine war.
Apparently, this involves correspondence between Lenya, the organiser of the smuggling channel, and Erno, the middleman handling the money transfer, with a customer named Kirill. All that is clear from the «double-crossed» Lenya’s words in Moscow, who asked to settle the dispute through intermediaries after being blocked and unable to make further contact.
Translation from Russian to English inside WhatsApp chat:
There was definitely something at that analyzer, most importantly from Rohde, expensive, but it is stuck in Taiwan now because of sanctions. Our manager needs to be filled in, this is the second time this has happened, 🙁
Listen, Ermo, why haven’t I received the money for that third order from you? You sent the equipment not for transit to someone else but through customs as usual…
Ermo: Ah, completely forgot, sent via airfreight. Hello, sorry for the confusion, here in Tallinn there was a check at the bank
Crypto Transaction Message: 0.4 ETH (€582.25)
Lenya: Damn, this is a setup? These are risks and you know my interests! What should I tell him now? I’ll wait for you here? He won’t go to Kazakhstan again next time!
Ermo: Lenya, calm down… It’s only clear to me that Kirill the banker sent me all the paperwork, but I need to ask him more because they started to stir up some tax issues on the road… Here in Moscow, we agreed – no one else. You are our main problem. Let it be smoother in transit next time.
Lenya: Yes, curse it, but they are completely insolvent over there in T… Not like this, tell Kirill that the situation ALWAYS changes, this is not the first time, remember! They are always slow at customs, and they keep their word. Ermo, buddy, let’s send another €4.5k via airfreight, the courier won’t bother me then 🙁
Ermo: Leonid, we all got messed up because of the EU. Kirill by the way is generally in England, they are not in the eurozone anymore 😊 just talked to him, he said Sasha (Alex) will handle it.
Lenya: They don’t pay for the delivery, and it’s impossible to prove any of this back to them. In Russia, everyone is totally relaxed about left-hand money laundering, bankers included, it’s all clear there.
Ermo: The second shipment wasn’t confirmed; it was just packaging so they can say that AnaPic was the target within Korea! You decided to buy stuff?! I want to work with you, but this equipment would have been rerouted via Moscow to another one immediately, because you don’t listen to these analysts, and Rohde generators aren’t even all gold that’s there now.
Lenya: And what am I here for? Why such carelessness, Leonid, you’re just a subcontractor, find someone else if you’re going to skimp 😠
Ermo, either I get my money now properly or I’ll write where it needs to go right now, dammit, what a mess?! For you, it’s pennies, for me, the reputation here is that of a grey sanctions importer, for such things I could be shot…
Gee, you stone, respond something at least…
Did you block the channel? What the heck?
The only thing we knew from the mediator of this conflictual situation is that the company “RM-Invest” from Moscow was involved. We access the KYC business databases in Russia to study the company in the public domain:
Translation from graphic image above from Russian to English:
|
IMPORT OF SPECTRUM ANALYZERS AND SIGNAL GENERATORS BY RUSSIAN COMPANIES Graph Labels: “Scientific Instruments and Systems LLC” “Fragment LLC” “MicroProbe LLC” “Industria LLC” “CCK Ratimor Kazakhstan LLC” “EbetraInvest LLC” “Specialized Equipment LLC” “Alanko Rus LLC” |
The total amount of equipment that can be used for electronic warfare and electronic intelligence, manufactured by companies like Keysight, AnaPico, and Rohde & Schwarz in 2023 and 2024, million $.
“RM-Invest” LLC Follow Company Profile Financial Links Sanctions Taxes History Amendments |
Basic type of ownership: Fully privately-owned (public company)
Legal status: Active Taxpayer Number (INN/KPP): 7718916265/772747293017 Registered capital: 100,000 rub. Registration date: December 27, 2012 Legal address: 107113, Moscow, Novorogozhskaya st., bldg. 14/3, room 4 Special tax regimes: Does not apply MSN register: Does not include |
So far, everything matches up; Lenya is Leonid Vladimirovich Tkachenko, the head of the company “RM-Invest”. Judging by the dates of establishment and closure and the minimum charter capital and zero revenue reported in 2014, everything points to a shell company waiting in dormant mode for its moment to shine. The Insider article also correlated with the type of equipment mentioned in the provided phone correspondence.
Nothing unusual, of course! A company with a fund of $100 imports electronic equipment worth several million of those same dollars, from an office in a simple Moscow studio apartment – this is so normal in Russia!
Translation from graphic image above from Russian to English:
| In January – May 2024, equipment from Rohde & Schwarz and Keysight Technologies was purchased by the company “Filol’s” for $2.9 million.
According to the Russian government procurement system, “Filol’s” has previously, at least in part, actively participated in a state order. Its most significant orders were for multi-functional (supply to a specialized center), Minpromtorg, “Russian space systems” (supply of measuring equipment), BPO “Progress”, and defensive UNIT INCHIXIM. |
Total of 3 organizations
Company Profiles: OOO “RM-Invest” Liquidated Reliability: Low Registered capital: 10,000 rub. General Director: Leonid Tkachenko INN: 7718916265 / OGRN: 1127747293761 Registration Date: 27 December 2012 Region: Moscow Main business activity: 70.10.1 – Management activities of financial-industrial groups JSC “Zodiac-2000” (Jsc “Zodiac-2000”) |
So far, nothing interesting, let’s look at the other side of the conflict – a rather unusual name of the counterparty in Tallinn, Ermo. A simple search on Google yields hundreds of Ermos across Estonia, but judging by the profile picture on the avatar – we are dealing with a well-paid businessman or a manager at a major company. Thus, we open LinkedIn, the business version of Facebook, he is bound to be there.
Excellent, there are far fewer Ermos on LinkedIn, we had to dig through all the pages and a familiar face pops up! Hello there, Ermo Eero from Tallinn, with a CV rich in experience, primarily in fintech and banking sectors involved in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing. Yet again, the elementary knowledge from the police academy’s first course proves true: if you want to catch a thief, think like a thief. But we were interested in a tidbit about his experience at a money transfer company, “TRANSFAST”, where he was not merely a mid-level hired manager but a full member of the board of directors.
Thus, we currently have a financier from Estonia, EU, paying via a crypto wallet for the services of a smuggler from Moscow, for military or dual-use equipment supplied from China, via a Kyrgyzstani named Hashimov with a company in Hong Kong. All as we love! Complicated (at first glance) but still quite elegant. However, still not thick, the connection to the final customer, a certain Kirill, is not yet traced. Well, we will dig further. We look for any clue from our new Estonian friend, Ermo. We comb through all business partner verification databases – and find more companies where our Ermo appears! And which he hides on LinkedIn… and at first it’s not clear why, since in the business environment it is customary to mention major projects in which you are involved..
Erno – one of three managers at the company “INWAY AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT AG”.
It gets interesting – we google this German company with a boring name not known to the public… our friend Google provides a mountain of links, and in the first rows, we see a connection with “IRONWALLET IO” – a crypto wallet developer. It gets more interesting – and TA DA…! We see the familiar figure from the correspondence, a knight with a red tail, or a topfhelm, to be exact. But this may just be a coincidence, as there are many different wallets, Ermo could have used any tool, even Western Union (spoiler-no longer).
Well, since we can’t squeeze more out of Ermo, we put him aside for now, and start searching for information about the mysterious Kirill from London. Since there aren’t many major financiers in London with a Russian name (and you can’t simply entrust the organisation of a smuggling channel for sanctioned equipment to Moscow to a mere manager), we start googling blindly the simple phrase: “Kirill London financier Banker”
And again, a miracle! Google thoughtfully offers Patriarch Kirill (immediately dismissed) and a picture of an article from the financial news portal “Talk Finance”. We open the article and… OMG! – A real gold mine for OSINT journalists like us – last year’s investigation EXACTLY ABOUT CONTRABAND SCHEMES OF MILITARY SANCTIONS! And specifically through the “Russian channel” in London. And even with a diagram of all the companies through which he (Kirill) works or at least worked before.
When searching for the connection between two bankers, ‘Kirill Yurovsky and Alexander Ostrovsky’, an article appears on a Ukrainian portal with a larger set of documents, which feature:
The most interesting aspect is that the schemes involve money transfer companies that have already been spotlighted in scandals such as money transfers to sanctioned Crimea. Also, Kirill Yurovsky’s possession of an Estonian passport (hello Ermo) narrows down the circle of suspicion.
Kirill’s London address is also present in the article, as well as his registered address in Tallinn.
So far the circle of suspects in this contraband scheme looks like this:
- Alexander (Sandor) Ostrovskiy – the main organizer of the “gray” import scheme, London, UK
- Kirill Yurovskiy – the financier of the scheme and the intermediary, London, UK
- Ermo Eero – the casher, money transfer and communication channel, Tallinn, Estonia
- Bruno Cakans – the curator of the transactions, the nominee, the organizer of the chain of shell companies, Tallinn, Estonia
- Leonid Tkachenko – the executor, the smuggler, the curator of the transactions, Moscow, Russia
Of course, there are other temporary persons in this scheme, but they are not critical for the functioning of this gray import channel for the needs of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, the main figures are these 5 people.
Now, having revealed facts about the client Kirill and the cashier Ermo, we combine their companies and that very crypto wallet ‘Iron Wallet’. The fact that Ermo is directly involved in the development of the ‘IRON WALLET’ crypto wallet already leads to certain thoughts. Not particularly good ones. We proceed to investigate further. We open the usage statistics for this application and the number of downloads – and our suspicions are confirmed!
The ‘IRON WALLET’ application from ‘INWAY AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT AG’ was installed on 660,000 devices, i.e., phones or computers, according to the statistics for September 2024.
IF EVERY USER used it for transfers or at least kept in this wallet conditionally $1,000, which is the minimum turnover for a user in this industry, it can be assumed that a total of around $660,000,000 or more than half a billion USD have been moved through this wallet.
But, interestingly, the COVERAGE OF THE WALLET ‘Iron Wallet’ from the developer company is, ATTENTION, $1286, which is in the charter capital of the founding company. In other words, in case of bankruptcy or fraudulent mischief by the gentlemen Ermo and Kirill, we reluctantly divide the miserly $128 lying in Hong Kong among 600,000 users and get… drumroll… 0.02 cents each! That’s after paying the lawyer for filing the lawsuit. In other words, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Quite a clever business our friends Ermo and Kirill have devised, indeed. Our admiration, extended ovations, and of course a complaint to the SEC, the American governmental agency regulating such payments under the Department of the Treasury.
Further investigation into the link ‘Ermo Eero and Inway AG’ revealed another name in this scheme, Bruno, full name BRUNO CAKANS, who also features simultaneously in both companies, ‘INWAY AG’ and ‘FINFLOW SOLUTIONS’.
This same Bruno from Latvia (another neighbouring Baltic country to Estonia) had previously featured in the Panamanian offshore EXANTE Ltd, as seen in the scandalous investigation ‘PanamaGate’:
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/56097964
Bruno Cakans was also spotted as a director of XNT Limited in the United Kingdom, along with other Russian founders, Alexei Kiriyenko and Anatoly Knyazev, both born in June 1984, according to the UK Companies House database.
Concluding the investigation on this matter, we can state the following:
Kirill Yurovsky (we have not yet investigated the connections and activities of his partner Alexander Ostrovsky), a ‘grey banker’, previously noticed in a similar scheme of smuggling equipment of military or dual-purpose – was not planning to close his business. He only improved it, as instead of usual bank transfers, easily subject to control, the banker introduced cryptocurrency and his own wallet ‘IronWallet’ for anonymous storage and transfers of money worldwide.
So, while there are suspects, the connection of Kirill, Ermo, and Bruno to the criminal world and charges for crimes against Ukraine can only be proven and brought by the law enforcement authorities of Estonia, Latvia, and the United Kingdom, within whose jurisdiction lie Ermo Eero, Bruno Cakans, and Kirill Borisovich Yurovsky. Our job is merely to provide the data and results of this investigation to the competent authorities of these countries.
By Skirmantas Malinauskas.
