Lithuanian Customs Claims Business Violation of Ban on Imports from Russia

Lithuanian business has not completely broken off contacts with companies from RUSSIA that have fallen under sanctions, said Rolandas Jurgaitis, a representative of the Lithuanian customs, Delfi reports.

“It seems that <...> we sympathize with Ukraine, but money is money, business is business, and not all business, I want to say, patriotically ceased its activities. There are those who continue and do not want to stop,” he said.

According to the representative of the department, some companies still order goods from Russia and Belarus, which are prohibited from being imported into Lithuania. Businessmen submit declarations several times in the hope that one of the employees will miss the goods and they will be able to circumvent the sanctions , Jurgaitis claims.

He noted that most often timber is illegally transported to Lithuania, as well as to other Baltic countries. Customs officers drew up more than 100 protocols in connection with offenses and began to investigate dozens of cases.

On June 15, the HEAD of the State Revenue Service of Latvia, Ieva Jaunzeme, reported more than 400 cases of violations of sanctions against Russia and Belarus, Leta wrote (a copy is available in the archive). She explained that companies forge contracts, indicating dates before the imposition of sanctions, which allows the import of goods.

Western countries have imposed sanctions against Russia due to military operations in Ukraine. The European Union adopted six packages of restrictions, including a ban on the import of iron, steel, coal, cement, rubber, timber, seafood, ALCOHOL, luxury goods and other categories of goods.

In May, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov noted that the countries that imposed sanctions accounted for half of the country's foreign trade turnover. The restrictions affected about 20% of Russian exports.