German-Japanese machine tool manufacturer supplied weapons production equipment to Russia despite official ban

DMG Mori, a worldwide leader of cutting machine tools, supplied equipment to Russia that was used in weapons production despite the official ban.

The relevant investigation was conducted by MDR, which confirmed that the equipment could have been delivered until February 2023.

In 2022, DMG Mori officially announced that it had been leaving the Russian market due to the country’s full-scale war against Ukraine.

In the fall of 2023, the company reiterated that its business had left the territory of Russia, and there was no supply or production there.

However, despite official statements from the company’s representatives, MDR obtained official documents confirming that after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the supply of industrial equipment continued.

These documents indicate that in November 2023, Ulyanovsk Machine Tool Plant, an asset of DMG Mori, received an order for the production of 20 machine tools. In total, in 2022-2023, Finval Energy received documents for 42 machine tools under the contract.

The manufacturer of these machine tools is listed in the documents as Ulyanovsk Machine Tool Plant. An additional five declarations were drawn up for an unknown number of machine tools manufactured by Ulyanovsk Machine Tool Plant for the Russian subsidiary DMG Mori Rus.

The documents also contained evidence not only of the sale of machine tools from this manufacturer, but also of their assembly at a Russian enterprise. They were assembled from components that came to the plant directly from the German company Sales Pro GMBH. The main delivery from this company took place on March 16-17, 2022, from Germany, and the weight of the delivery at that time was about 4.7 tons.

After that, the necessary equipment for the production of the machine tools was obtained through the intermediary company TLC K1 and the Turkish company Dn Makine Elektronik Teknoloji Sanayi Ticaret, which supplied the necessary components for the production of the machine tools.

Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, about 30 Russian defense companies purchased machine tools from DMG Mori, including the Sukhoi Design Bureau and the Izhevsk Electromechanical Plant Kupol.

According to SPARK-Interfax, the value of the company’s inventory increased from $6.6 million at the end of 2022 to $11 million at the end of 2023, almost returning to the pre-war level of $14 million.

Militarnyi previously reported that Russia was buying second-hand Japanese Tsugami equipment from China for the production of weapons at its enterprises.