Lübeck: 16,000 deliveries to Russian defence companies alleged

German federal prosecutors arrested five people in February 2026 on suspicion of running a criminal organisation that exported goods to Russia through a Lübeck trading company, a shell company and fictitious customers, including to 24 listed defence firms.

period

2022–2026

outcome

Charged, pending

parties

A Lübeck trading company and its managing director; A second shell company in Lübeck

programmes

Russian Federation

reviewed

2026-09-20

Cite this page

APA 7

Sanctions Evasion Reference. (2026, September 20). Lübeck: 16,000 deliveries to Russian defence companies alleged. https://sanctionsevasion.org/cases/luebeck-export-network-2026/

Chicago

Sanctions Evasion Reference. “Lübeck: 16,000 deliveries to Russian defence companies alleged.” Last reviewed September 20, 2026. https://sanctionsevasion.org/cases/luebeck-export-network-2026/.

BibTeX

@misc{ser-cases-luebeck-export-network-2026,
  author = {{Sanctions Evasion Reference}},
  title  = {Lübeck: 16,000 deliveries to Russian defence companies alleged},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Last reviewed 2026-09-20},
  url    = {https://sanctionsevasion.org/cases/luebeck-export-network-2026/}
}

The date is when this page was last reviewed, not when it was first published.

Arrests announced by the German Federal Public Prosecutor on 2 February 2026. Nothing has been proved: these are the allegations in the arrest warrants as the prosecutor summarised them, and the suspects are presumed innocent. The page uses only that press release and will be updated when a court has ruled.

What is alleged

According to the release, one suspect is the sole shareholder and managing director of a trading company in Lübeck. It says that he and the other suspects, “on numerous occasions” since February 2022 at the latest, used the company to procure goods for Russian industry and export them to Russia.

The methods the release names are:

A second shell company in Lübeck, in addition to the trading company.
Fictitious customers, both inside and outside the European Union, named on the paperwork.
A Russian company as recipient, in which the managing director also holds a senior position.

The prosecutor says the aim was to circumvent the EU’s Russia embargo regulations and that Russian state bodies are suspected of being behind the procurement network. At least 24 listed Russian defence companies were among the end users.

The scale alleged

The release says the investigation indicates the suspects may have arranged about 16,000 deliveries to Russia, and that the total value of the business comes to about €30 million. The Federal Court of Justice’s investigating judge ordered the assets frozen. Four arrests and one provisional arrest were made in and around Lübeck, with searches there and in Frankfurt, Nordwestmecklenburg, Nuremberg and Ostholstein, and five other suspects were not arrested.

The charge

The offence alleged is violating the Foreign Trade and Payments Act “in a commercial and organised manner”, as members of a criminal organisation under section 129 of the Criminal Code. The investigation was led by the Customs Criminal Office with the Federal Intelligence Service.

Why it is here

The release describes the same structure that convicted cases describe elsewhere on this site: a front company, a second shell, invented buyers and a recipient in Russia under the same control. It is here because the description is unusually specific, not because the allegations have been tested. See front companies.

Programmes and jurisdictions in this case

Russia sanctions — Measures imposed from 2014 and greatly expanded from 2022, combining designations, sectoral restrictions, export controls and a price cap on seaborne oil.
Germany — A major European manufacturing and trading economy whose companies appear in enforcement records and investigations concerning exports that continued to Russia after 2022, alongside the country's own active enforcement effort.