As the German newspaper “Wirtschafts Woche” and a number of other news agencies reported on March 27, the Hamburg prosecutor’s office brought charges against five people who, in its opinion, were involved in the export of Siemens gas turbines to Russian-occupied Crimea in violation of sanctions.
It is indicated that among the accused there are four Germans and one man with French and Swiss citizenship, including one current employee of the Siemens company. According to the prosecutor’s office, turbines worth 111 million euros were shipped from the port of Hamburg to St. Petersburg between November 2015 and January 2016.
It was officially announced that they would be used in Taman in southern Russia, but it later turned out that the turbines were installed at power plants built by the aggressor in Sevastopol and Simferopol and served to supply energy to the Crimea.
In November 2018, representatives of the Hamburg prosecutor’s office announced the beginning of an investigation against three German citizens on suspicion of involvement in the supply of seven turbines to the Crimea. Two of them at that time worked in the Russian subsidiary of Siemens in St. Petersburg, another in the enterprise created by Siemens and the Russian Power Machines of Alexei Mordashov.
The Hamburg prosecutor’s office believes that the defendants knew about the intention to install turbines in Crimea in circumvention of sanctions.
According to prosecutors, the defendants acted with the intent “to profit indirectly from the sale of gas turbines, as well as from the prospect of a contract for the maintenance of the sold gas turbines through variable components of wages”.
Let us recall that in 2021 our Association consistently exposed the supply of industrial pumps of the Siemens and Grundfos brands for the Beshterek-Zuysky water pipeline, which should supply Simferopol with 20 thousand cubic meters of artesian water daily.
Pumping out the corresponding underground water horizons by the pumping station would have significant negative consequences for the residents of the Zuyskaya Valley; it deprived them of access to adequate water, destroyed perennial plantings and a unique riverine ecosystem.
ARC contacted both German law enforcement agencies and the “Siemens” headquarters in Munich, the Austrian Siemens company, its subsidiary in Kyiv and the
“Siemens” branch in Moscow.
