The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Friday, August 23, a new round of financial sanctions against companies suspected of fueling the Russian military-industrial complex and supporting the Kremlin's war effort in Ukraine.
Among them, the US authorities specifically targeted several subsidiaries of Promtech, a large Russian industrial group specializing in the development and production of components for aviation, the space sector and land and marine equipment. On July 18, The World and several media partners had revealed the tricks of this group to obtain supplies in Europe despite international sanctions. Our investigation had notably highlighted the role played by Industrial Technologies Group France (ITGF), a French subsidiary of Promtech based in Yvelines, which for years obtained supplies from European suppliers of technical components that could be used for military purposes, particularly in tanks, drones or shells.
“Naivety with serious consequences”
After the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most European manufacturers had cut ties with companies in the Promtech galaxy. But the Russian group had been cunning in registering a company in Turkey, Enütek Makina, which had taken over from ITGF to continue exporting these components to Russia.
The American authorities had already sanctioned, at the end of 2023, several companies of the Promtech group, without specifically targeting its French and Turkish subsidiaries. This is now done. Confirming the revelations of the World and its partners, the Treasury Department argues that ITGF worked with Promtech to “provide electrical components of American or foreign origin” and that Enütek Makina “made hundreds of technology deliveries, including high-priority dual-use technologies such as electronic integrated circuits and ceramic capacitors, to U.S.-sanctioned Promtech subsidiaries”The United States has also identified other Turkish, Estonian and Hong Kong structures suspected of being front companies for the Russian group.
Asked through his lawyer, Mr.e Amandine Eritzian, ITGF director Igor Reutov assures that “annihilated” by these sanctions, which also target him by name. This Russian, who has been living in France for several years, claims to have cut ties with Promtech at the end of 2021 to concentrate on “the French market”. Pleading a “naivety (…) heavy with consequences » facing “serious manipulations”he places the responsibility for the creation of Enütek Makina on the new Chinese owners of ITGF, Xingze Zhou and Li Xinglin, whom he assures have not “never met[s] ». The publication of the survey of World and its partners having “provoked an immediate reaction from ITGF's partners, refusing, without delay, to continue commercial relations”the ITGF company was liquidated at the end of July.
Source: Lemonde
