Page 65 - bne Magazine February 2023

bne February 2023 Eastern Europe I 65
Supplying sanctioned products
The BIC found several companies
that are engaged in the export of Belarusian wood products to the EU through Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The products are traded under forged certificates and their document claim that they originate in one of the Central Asian countries.
The BIC received a tip that the private Belarusian expert reviews centre “Quality Standard” was offering services for the re-export of EU goods to Belarus through Kyrgyzstan. Acting as a potential client, BIC journalists talked to the company’s manager and found out that it was also possible to get Belarusian wood products to the EU through Kyrgyzstan. Quality Standard offered the help of another company called “Certificate KG”, which helps Belarusian wood suppliers obtain Kyrgyz documents to re-label their products so they can pass EU Customs.
One of the founders of Certificate
KG was Oleg Narchuk, who
previously worked for Belarus’
State Standardisation Committee (Gosstandart). In October 2022, Narchuk spoke at a webinar organised by Belarus’ National Centre for Marketing and Price Studies about the “Imports of goods into the Republic of Belarus under sanctions.”
Other companies also engaged in delivering Belarusian products to
the EU using forged documents
were Agro KG, SK Grand and Admit company. The latter is engaged in wood waste processing, producing pellets, briquettes and various other wood- based fuels. On its website, (registered in July) it claims to receive 40, 000 tonnes of wood waste “yearly”.
Pretending to be potential customers, the BIC asked to have Belarusian pellets delivered to the EU. Admit agreed to this and said it would be done with
the help of their production facility
in Kyrgyzstan; they would send the Belarusian products along with their own products produced in Kyrgyzstan, that way the products would enter the EU on Kyrgyz certificates.
Russia reports its first “kraken” coronavirus case
bne IntelIiNews
Russia recorded its first official case of the so-called Kraken subvariant of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the Rospotrebnadzor state monitoring agency reported on January 12.
The highly contagious subvariant was reported in the Penza region, 625 km southeast of Moscow.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the Kraken variant “the most transmissible known COVID-19 variant” on January 4. It was first detected in the United States in October and has since spread to several European countries.
Now it has reached Russia, according to the press service of Rospotrebnadzor. However, despite being highly infectious, the effects of the virus are mild, according to WHO experts.
Currently there are a wide range of Omicron varieties established in Russia, which reported 4,201 new cases of coronavirus infection in the last week and 48 patients fatalities. The dominant variant in Russia is the BA.5 variant, nicknamed “kraken”, RFE/RL reports.
Last autumn a number of isolated cases of infection with the Delta strain were also detected in Russia, which dominated in the second half of 2021 and caused the death of several hundred thousand people. Rospotrebnadzor has not identified other strains in recent months.
In total, about 22mn cases of COVID-19 infection were registered in Russia (including the annexed Crimea) during the pandemic. The total number of fatalities in Russia to date according to official figures is 394,214.
Kraken usually progresses as an acute respiratory viral infection, Kamil Khafizov, who heads a group working on genomic research at the sanitary watchdog’s Central Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology, told TASS on January 13.
"The disease caused by this virus is mild, usually progressing as an acute respiratory viral infection; at least such data is available from abroad where XBB.1.5 has spread widely, though the disease may progress not that mildly with people from vulnerable categories of population," he said.
Following the first incidence of kraken in Russia, the authorities have no plans to impose restrictions, the watchdog said.
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