German company suspected of supplying machinery worth €5.5 million to Russia

The Munich prosecutor's office conducted searches at the machine-building company Spinner on suspicion of supplying machine tools to Russia. This was reported by German publications, in particular Merkur and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

According to German law enforcement officials, the company circumvented sanctions and supplied more than 20 high-precision machine tools with a total value of about €5.5 million to Russia.

Three employees of the company have been charged. Searches were also carried out at the company's branches in Stuttgart and Bulgaria. Spinner Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik GmbH also has production facilities in Turkey.

The prosecutor's office refers to a report by the Arte television channel from the end of April, which traces the export of the Spinner machine in detail. According to the report, the machine was sold to a Russian defense company via third countries, partly with forged documents.

During the investigation in mid-February 2025, a Spinner machine subject to sanctions was confiscated. According to export documents, it was to be shipped in August 2023 from Germany via Poland and Belarus to Uzbekistan.

Investigators suspect that the machine was actually delivered by a Russian company linked to the manufacturer. There is also evidence of possible deliveries via Turkey and China.

In an Arte report, one of the three managers of the company, Nikolaus Spinner, rejected the allegations, claiming that the machine had been delivered to an Uzbek manufacturer of agricultural machinery. However, the manager of the Uzbek company told journalists that no such purchases had been made.

In September 2023, Ukraine's National Agency for Corruption Prevention added 14 Russian importers of Spinner machine tools to the list of candidates for international and Ukrainian sanctions.

According to the NACP, another universal German Spinner machine tool was shipped from a factory in Turkey to the Russian company Sirovsky Mechanical Plant. Russia needs this machine tool to increase production of high-explosive fragmentation shells for tanks.

Spinner has posted a declaration on its website regarding compliance with sanctions against Russia and Belarus, and the company is preparing to introduce GPS tracking of new machine tools starting in 2025.

Source: Liga.net