The Estonian case law website has made available a number of further judgments relating to convictions for sanctions offences:
Case 1. Judgment dated October 6, 2025
This case was the prosecution of Mati-Dmitri Terestal (see our earlier post). It was alleged that he, and another, had made economic resources and find available to a designated person who was the head of Yle1 (a Russian state-owned media outlet). It was alleged that Terestal continued to operate the media outlet after it had been closed, through a front entity and had continued to provide economic resources in the form of technical equipment, and other assets.
It was also alleged that by hiring staff for the company this was making economic resources available to Yle1, as was the creation of web domains.
The County Court had convicted Terestal in January 2025, and sentenced him to 2 years and 4 months, this was suspended for three and a half years. He was also fined €7882.92.
The District Court disagreed with the County Court on a number of issues (including whether hiring staff without more amounted to the making available of an economic resource, but upheld the conviction. The sentence was unchanged.
The decision includes a discussion of the characteristics of control for asset freeze purposes.
Case 2. Judgment dated January 21, 2026
The prosecution entered into an agreement with the defendants that was upheld by the court following guilty pleas by the defendants.
The defendants (a company and a director that company) had set out to create a fake network of transactions and sales in order to import bitumen from Russia in breach of the EU’s sanctions. The fake transactions involved front companies in a range of jurisdictions including Kazakhstan and Hong Kong. One member of staff (who was either not prosecuted or separately prosecuted) had the role of maintaining a watching brief on changes to the EU’s sanctions in order to develop changes to the methodology for masking the Russian imports.
The company, Keystone Shipping OÜ, was fined €250,000, ordered to pay costs of €61,928.18 and had bitumen valued at €179,200 confiscated.
Andrey Kolesnikov, the sole director of the company, was fined €32,110 and costs of €1,329.
Case 3. Judgment dated March 6, 2026
The case was an appeal to the District Court from a judgment of the County Court which had found two men guilty of attempting to export a BMW car to Russia in breach of the EU’s sanctions against the export of luxury goods. Vladimir Palamarchuk was fined €3000 and Igor Palamarchuk was fined €2000. In addition the car, valued at over €50,000, was confiscated as the proceeds of crime.
The appeal, which was largely based on whether the car exceeded the 50,000 threshold, was denied and the fines and confiscation upheld.
The judgment relied on the EU’s FAQs in relation to the process for determining the price of an exported good.
