Father and Son Who Smuggled 'Strategic Goods' to Russia Sent to Prosecution Together

A group involved in smuggling strategic materials to Russia has been caught and sent to the prosecution.

Busan Customs of the Korea Customs Service announced on the 28th that they apprehended Mr. A (in his 60s) and Mr. B (in his 30s) on charges of violating the Customs Act and the Foreign Trade Act, and sent them to the prosecution without detention.

Image of indirect export routes to China and disguised export routes to neighboring countries by Mr. A and others. Provided by the Korea Customs Service

Mr. A and Mr. B are father and son, suspected of illegally exporting ultra-precision machine tools capable of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction to Russia without government approval.

The machine tools they smuggled are items controlled under the Wassenaar Arrangement (WA) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), and according to Article 19, Paragraph 2 of the Foreign Trade Act, export permission from the Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy is required for export to any country.

Currently, due to the Russia-Ukraine war, exporting strategic materials such as ultra-precision machine tools to Russia is impossible (export permission cannot be granted).

However, Mr. A and others, knowing this fact, falsely declared the ultra-precision machine tools as low-spec machine tools to customs and smuggled them out.

Low-spec machine tools are not classified as strategic materials and do not require export permission, so they abused this by falsely reporting the model names.

Additionally, as customs inspections on exports to Russia intensified, they circumvented the restrictions by rerouting exports through China to Russia or pretending to export to neighboring countries such as Kyrgyzstan, then diverting the goods to Russia during actual transportation.

Through these methods, Mr. A and others smuggled a total of 98 machine tools worth approximately 15.5 billion KRW to Russia in 76 shipments from August 2022 to December last year.

A Busan Customs official stated, “We will focus on cracking down on illegal exports such as rerouting through neighboring countries to evade international sanctions against Russia and disguising product names. We urge the public to report any illegal exports or fraudulent activities to the ‘Korea Customs Service Smuggling Report Center.’”