A 56-year-old Russian national has been jailed for 18 months and ordered to pay a €200,000 fine for breaking sanctions on trading with Russia.

The man was arrested in Gorssel, east of Apeldoorn, at the end of September 2022 after his bank tipped off the authorities about suspicious transactions. It later transpired he had been selling microchips to Russia for seven months.

The man had been running a one-person trading firm with Russia for six years when the invasion of Ukraine took place. He had then tried to circumvent the sanctions by using fake bills and Russian traders on the Maldives, the court in Rotterdam was told.

The chips eventually ended up with the Russian weapons industry.