/ world today news/ When Helsinki started a “Cold War” with Russia last year, the Finns approached the issue not formally, but with pedantry and thoroughness. Biased checks have hit people crossing the border, sometimes accompanied by confiscation of personal property and prosecution.
In addition, Suomi declared a war on “gray imports” – Finnish state agencies are waging a fierce fight against companies that secretly continue to import “sanctioned goods” (ie, sanctioned goods) into the territory of the Russian Federation. Another thing is that not only the Finns, but also their neighbors in the EU are engaged in such imports.
The psychological damage
As you know, last year Suomi closed access for Russians with tourist visas. But even when Russian tourists still had the opportunity to enter Finland, they ran the risk of encountering some minor “scam” there.
Russians report extremely harsh working methods of Finnish customs officials and claim that after presenting a Russian passport at the border, even their sandwiches and water are often taken away. The Finns themselves do not at all deny the fact of such an attitude towards the Russians, on the contrary, perhaps they are even proud of it.
In September, the one-year entry ban for most Russians, introduced by the Finnish authorities in 2022, expires. In this regard, Finnish journalists turned to the country’s new Prime Minister Petteri Orpo with the question: does he intend to extend this ban? To this question he gave an answer that does not allow for discrepancies. “Obviously entry restrictions will continue as the war continues”the head of government said.
And in the absence of Russians, the attention of Finnish customs officials is already directed at citizens of their own country visiting Russia. They are no less carefully “shaken off” for a possible “penalty”.
Finnish customs say a significant amount of goods have been confiscated recently. “There are hundreds of cases where goods suspected of being subject to sanctions have been seized. In monetary terms, we are talking about at least tens of millions of euros”, said senior customs official Sami Rakshit.
He adds that his colleagues have kept all kinds of things. “These are yachts and luxury goods. IT items: routers, computers, underwater survey equipment and phones for example “Rakshit lists.
True, as he admitted, most of the seized goods were returned to their owners after all. So they get away with psychological, not material damage. “During the criminal proceedings, a decision is made whether to file a confiscation claim with the court or not”, explains Rakshit.
Meanwhile, the decision to return still does not mean that a person will be able to use their thing as they originally intended. After all, a forfeiture action implies that the prosecutor must ask the court to confiscate in favor of the state the money received in “execution of a crime“, or “the objects connected with the crime”. The decision to satisfy the prosecutor’s request is made by the court.
„ Without such a requirement, customs will not confiscate the goods, but will return them back to the owner during the process. The owner, in turn, can return the goods to the store or take them to another country, but not to Russia. We prevented the direct export of goods to Russia, this is the purpose of the sanctions, “ explains Sami Rakshit.
In the past year, Finnish customs officials say they have most frequently confiscated computer accessories, electronics and goods related to water transport and shipping from Russians, as well as mobile phones, fishing radars and drones, which are subject to restrictions.
Many Finnish companies themselves stopped selling sanctioned goods to the Russians. For example, companies Gigantti and Power, which sell smartphones, computers and household appliances, announced in August last year that they no longer sell in Russia.
Often, Finnish entrepreneurs try to outrun the locomotive. Thus, the company Kymen seudun oskarkauppa, which sells various types of food and household goods, announced that it has limited duty-free sales even to products that are not included in the sanction list.
Detours
At the same time, the Finnish press is disturbed by the fact that not all businessmen from their country have shown “consciousness” and have refused to trade with the Russian Federation. Thus, in August 2022, the export of mink and fox skins to Russia, which stopped at the beginning of last year, resumed and even increased.
EU sanctions prohibit the import into Russia of luxury goods that cost more than three hundred euros. Thus, leather products are also prohibited. However, the sanctions do not apply to raw hides, which some sellers of this product take advantage of.
At the same time, the Finnish press cannot get any information about them. The media complain that customs officials and other government agencies do not disclose the names of companies exporting furs to the Russian Federation.
Where there is a ban on legal trade, some businesses operate illegally. At the beginning of June, the Finnish press reported that the country’s customs administration had opened more than 400 cases against companies suspected of violating the sanctions regime, which limits the possibility of supplying goods to Russia.
These companies are reported to have acted in a roundabout way. They “on paper” carry out deliveries to the countries of the Central Asian region bordering Russia. However, according to Finnish customs, in reality, shipments of goods supposedly destined for Central Asia were diverted to the Russian Federation.
At least sixty such episodes have been recorded in the last month alone. Sami Rakshit says that recently, deliveries of all kinds of goods to Central Asian countries have become the subject of special attention from Finnish customs.
According to Rakshit, the reason for the suspicions is the sharp multiple increase in the volume of supplies to the countries of the Central Asian region. According to customs data, approximately every fourth shipment of goods delivered to Central Asian countries is diverted to the Russian market.
In particular, according to the information of the customs administration, the volume of technical equipment, microchips and various types of aggregates delivered through Finland has increased tenfold. Finnish customs officials are confident that such dynamics can hardly be explained by an increase in demand for these products in Central Asia.
According to them, in fact, many shipments of such goods either return to Russia or do not reach recipients in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and other countries of the region without leaving the territory of the Russian Federation.
To date, about ten cases have already reached the courts, initiated against Finnish businessmen suspected of importing “sanctioned goods” into Russia. There have already been several cases where the suspects have been found guilty and sentenced.
It should be noted that Finland has clearly become only a small part of a huge mosaic. Recently, the Financial Times published data that only half of the sanctioned goods that were transported from the European Union to the countries of the EAEU Customs Union (Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) reached their final destination.
According to the financial edition, the total volume of such “dissolved” goods in recent years amounts to one billion euros. Based on these data, the politicians of the EU countries come to the conclusion that now it is important not so much to introduce new sanctions packages against Russia, but to ensure control over the implementation of the previous ones. According to experts, there are too many “holes” left in the sanctioning “fence”, which are very difficult to “plug” completely.
And Estonians too
In this regard, it is interesting to compare the situation in Finland with what is happening in the territory of its closest neighbor in the EU, and now also in NATO – Estonia. Recently, the Estonian shipping company Hansa Shipping has come under fire. The journalists found that the ships of this company still carry out transportation from the port of Muuga to Kaliningrad.
Hansa Shipping boss Ants Ratas had to make excuses. Pressed against the wall by the press, he hastened to state that, according to them, the company practically does not transport goods between Estonia and Russia.
„ If we transport, then minor quantities”Rathas muttered fearfully, confused in his testimony. According to the director of Hansa Shipping, the goods carried on their ships are mainly of companies from different EU countries, but not from Estonia.
It is instructive that where their own authorities directly forbid Estonian enterprises from cooperating with the Russians, companies from other Baltic countries try to scoop up the rest without an owner “piece of the pie”.
Last year, the Estonian state enterprise Operail stopped transporting Russian and Belarusian goods. This benefited the Latvian state company LDz Cargo, which this year started transporting goods from Estonian ports to Russia.
However, the volumes there are small, and the Latvian infrastructure is not used, which means less revenue than from transit cargo moving directly through the territory of Latvia.
Answering the questions of the nationalists of his country why he did not show “principle” and also ban such transport, Latvian Minister of Transport Janis Wittenbergs emphasizes: If we talk about the example of Estonia, they already have private carriers that transport these goods. And there are other players in Latvia, there are also in Lithuania.
If there is some local decision to prohibit LDz Cargo from doing this (transportation of Russian cargo. – author’s note), there are no guarantees that other traders operating in the Baltics will not continue to do so … “
In May 2023, the Estonian media reported that despite the adopted ten package of sanctions, exports from this Baltic republic to Russia in March this year (compared to March 2022) increased by 17 million euros.
Jönnis Nyrk, an official of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claims that at least three quarters of the products exported from Estonia to Russia are not of Estonian origin. This situation worries local government agencies.
On May 18, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Norway and Poland agreed to strengthen border controls and exchange information between their customs authorities.
Representatives of these countries note that fifteen months after the start of unprecedented anti-Russian sanctions “Russia has come up with many ways to get around them.”
Translation: ES
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