NYT unveils how Türkiye and Morocco help Russia bypassing sanctions, 19 December 2023

Russian authorities and companies have joined forces and turned to Morocco and Türkiye to use their ports to evade sanctions against Russia, reports The New York Times.

..."Russian authorities and companies have teamed up to exploit loopholes in the bans. They tapped into networks of intermediaries, including in China, and disguised their activities through shell companies, according to leaked Russian government emails, trade documents and recordings of online conversations between Russian engineers," the article says.

Russia also turned to countries that have taken a neutral position in the war in Ukraine, such as Morocco and Türkiye, and used ports to receive goods from global technology production centers, which were then placed on other ships bound for Russia.

This process is known as transshipment. Then, prohibited technical products could be purchased from well-known suppliers and convenient e-commerce sites, such as Nag...

However, after Western countries imposed new trade restrictions on Russia, nothing was coming in. Convex employees soon found a solution.

While American technology supplier Cisco stopped sales to Russia on March 3, 2022, engineers from Convex easily obtained the necessary Cisco equipment through an obscure Russian e-commerce site called Nag, which circumvented international trade restrictions, by buying American equipment through a network of suppliers in China...