Despite sanctions, Russia continues to obtain Western technology — including computer numerical controlled (CNC) machine tools. They are a highly accurate dual-use technology that is used to produce missile components and aircraft parts. Turkey has become a key transshipment hub that Russia uses for parallel import of Western-produced dual-use goods in order to omit sanctions.
Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) examines the case of Turkish company JACBAC TECHNOLOGY DIŞ TİCARET LİMİTED ŞİRKETİ (Jacbac) to demonstrate the role Turkey plays as a transit point for the high-tech machine tools used in Russian military manufacturing. The project relied on open data, and it mostly studied Russian and Turkish trade records, Russian and Turkish corporate records and Russian procurement records.
Turkish corporate records from 2019 to 2023 indicate that members of the Jacobson Backman family, which owns a series of Swedish entities including CNC machine tool manufacturer SMT Swedish Machine Tool Company AB, likely owned Jacbac until at least February 2023 along with business partner Fatih Elagöz, a Turkish resident of Sweden. According to those same Turkish corporate records, since February 2023, Turkish national Selçuk Elagöz has acted as the manager and sole shareholder of Jacbac, and currently functions as its liquidator.
Records indicate that Turkish entity MERTEGE MAKİNA SANAYİ VE TİCARET LİMİTED ŞİRKETİ (Mertege) imported at least 9 cargoes of Western-produced machine tools, including 6 cargoes that specified they contained 5-axis machine tools, from entities in Germany and Sweden between August 2022 and June 2023. While the trade records alone cannot confirm that Jacbac’s exports to Russia contained machine tools first imported to Turkey by Mertege, comparing the records indicates that there were multiple correlations between the shipments when comparing Russian and Turkish trade records.
Jacbac’s apparent willingness to ship EU-produced machine tools to Russia is being capitalized upon by Russian military-industrial contractors — Umac and Avbis.
C4ADS also examined Mertege’s import of two CNC machine tools: a five-axis CNC Hermle C250 U machining center from a third-party supplier in Germany, and Jacbac’s subsequent export of a 2023 Hermle CNC machining center to Russian company Avbis. In autumn 2023, journalist-investigator Inna Popovych at Trap Aggressor studied a case with a Spinner CNC machine tool that was manufactured in Germany and was transported to Russia through Turkey.
These reports by think tanks all over the world, including work by the Ukrainian media project on sanctions Trap Aggressor, help EU and US authorities develop effective sanctions policies and work on stricter export control so that Russia cannot get dual-use goods and circumvent sanctions through third countries. Subscribe to Trap Aggressor on X (Twitter) to get all the updates on our new research projects and the results of our work.