The Swedish Security Service has issued a press release confirming raids on multiple residential properties in southern and western Sweden, as well as the arrest of two individuals suspected of gross violations of the EU’s sanctions against Russia.
The breaches are said to relate to the “procurement of advanced products on behalf of Russia” but no further detail has been provided at this stage.
A few weeks ago, Latvia’s Customs Service published data on its sanctions enforcement actions for the first quarter of 2026.
This includes:
The government of Poland has issued a press release detailing its efforts to date on the enforcement of the EU’s sanctions against Russia and Belarus.
My thanks to Dr Marcin Lukowski for drawing this release to the blog’s attention.
To date Poland has:
The government also states that it has frozen €546.2m in assets, and that nearly 56% of all EU customs alerts originate from Poland.
As per our earlier post from September 2025 – at that stage Poland had imposed 42 fines for a total of PLN 26.6m or €6.2m, meaning the number of fines, and the value of fines imposed, has nearly tripled since September last year.
Further to an earlier post relating to convictions of an individual and company obtained in October 2024 for supplying aircraft parts to Russian customers in breach of the EU’s sanctions, the Rotterdam Court has now ruled in the confiscation proceedings brought by the prosecution.
In the confiscation judgement against the (unnamed) company, the court ordered the confiscation of €165,826.
The court held that the revenue obtained from the sanctions breaches was €2,901,194, but allowed as “deductible costs” 82% of this amount, or €2,385,739. This is in line with the Dutch approach of allowing the convicted parties to break even on the unlawful transactions by confiscating not the illegally-obtained revenue (which the CJEU has held is a permissible approach), but rather the pure profit element.
The profit element was accordingly assessed as €515,455 which was divided between the convicted person and the convicted company.
In the second confiscation judgment against the individual, the same analysis was undertaken with the balance of €349,629 from the profits attributed to the individual. The judgment states that a further 599 days of jail time would be added to the existing sentence in the event that the confiscation order is not satisfied.
Danish company FLSmidth & Co A/S has issued a press release stating that it has self-reported the outcome of an internal investigation to both OFAC and the Danish Business Authority and will cooperate with the authorities.
The press release states that the internal investigation ” identified information indicating that certain pre-contract tender materials have been provided to persons in the Russian Federation in connection with a limited number of potential projects in Kazakhstan”.
The press release adds that as a result of the internal investigation the company is “in the process of reviewing and enhancing its compliance programme and risk management measures as well as other mitigating action”.
On Sunday Sweden’s Prosecutors announced the arrest of a Chinese national who was the captain of the Syrian-flagged vessel suspected of belonging to the Russian shadow fleet, the Jin Hui.
The particular offences forming the basis for the captain’s arrest are the use of false documents and suspected violations of the Maritime Act in relation to seaworthiness.
The vessel is reported to have been in Swedish territorial waters at the time it was detained and is now anchored off Trelleborg.
Further to our earlier post regarding the boarding and capture of a cargo vessel, the Caffa, the Swedish Prosecutor’s Office has announced that the vessel has now been formally seized the vessel “in order to obtain a judicial review of whether the vessel can be handed over to the state”.
Press headlines that the vessel has already been fully confiscated appear to be overstating the current position.
The press release adds that the investigation involves a request for mutual legal assistance from another state, but that state is not named. The vessel is suspected of having been carrying stolen Ukrainian grain and to have been sailing under false flag documentation.
The German authorities have published the third instalment of their 6-monthly updates on their current enforcement actions.
The report highlights:
The update also reports on a decision of the CJEU from 5 February 2026 upholding the seizure by German customs of a Mercedes car purchased in Russia and imported to Germany. The CJEU held that the single specific import did not need to “generate significant revenue for the Russian state”, so long as the general category of goods did.
Further cases noted previously in the blog over the last few months, but not included in the report are:
Further to our earlier post, the Estonian Public Prosecutor has charged Oleg Bessedin on suspicion of:
“transmitting sanctioned Russian TV programs and content via TV and social media channels controlled by him in Estonia and making the sanctioned content available to other channels as well”.
He is also charged with non-violent offences against the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Estonia.
As part of the same investigation, the Prosecutor’s Office reached a settlement with an unnamed legal entity as part of which that entity made a charitable donation of €4000 to a Ukrainian support charity.
It is being reported that the Latvian authorities have entered into settlement agreements with two companies and a director of one of the companies in relation to resolving prosecutions for breaches of the EU’s Russian sanctions.
The director of the company to be liquidated was fined €10,140 and the second company was fined €17,940.
The first company (unnamed) had accepted an order to ship to Russia Buchholz relays and control relays designed to protect transformers, with a total value of €161,352.
The exporter approached a customs broker (the second unnamed company) to assist with the shipments to Russia. The broker was not told, and nor did it make enquiries, about the prohibited status of the goods.
The shipment did not proceed, but was stopped after an export declaration was made at the Riga Free Port.
