Customs data: London-based Mykines shipped ~$1.2B of chips, servers, and other electronics to Russia, at least $982M of which are subject to export restrictions
including mobile phones, laptops, circuit boards and semiconductors — to Russia since February 2022. https://www.ft.com/... Richard Shearman / @dickshearman : Sanctions UK style: ‘Significant control’ is exercised by Vitali Poliakou, ‘a 53 yr old Ukrainian.... her public Instagram page lists her activities as IT professional and pole dancer’ The UK business that shipped $1.2bn of electronics to Russia https://www.ft.com/... Graham Barrow / @greybrow53 : This is an @ft story about Mykines Corporation LLP. Below are screen grabs of a/c filed by Mykines and Nippon Klick LLP who have the same current and ex owners. Look at the labels Same date, consecutive scan numbers They arrived in the same envelope https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/... Ed Siddons / @edwardsiddons : A terraced house in Enfield oversaw the export of $1.2bn of electronics to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine last year. Very normal country with very good oversight of company registrations and export controls. https://www.ft.com/... Ann Pettifor / @annpettifor : A superb piece of investigative journalism... https://www.ft.com/... Alexander von Witzleben / @alexwitzleben : The UK business that shipped $1.2bn of electronics to Russia. #Mykines had been active in Russia prior to the invasion, but the records imply its business with the country suddenly took off after the onset of the war https://www.ft.com/... #sanctions #VladimirPutin Max Seddon / @maxseddon : A mysterious UK company in a terraced house in Enfield, London has sent $1.2bn in electronics to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine - and nearly $1bn of it is subject to export controls. 🤔 Fascinating story by @MilesMJohnson @xtophercook @NastyaStognei https://www.ft.com/... Oliver Rivers / @maxrothbarth : Superb reporting. “Some of the customs records have errors — or may have been the subject of subterfuge. For example, there are six entries logging the import of paper. But the implied price of this paper is, in some cases, $500,000 a kilogramme.” https://twitter.com/... Tom Braithwaite / @tbraithwaite : A billion dollar tech supplier to Russia is based in a suburban house in north London. Great story from @MilesMJohnson, @xtophercook and @NastyaStognei https://www.ft.com/... Tom Keatinge / @keatingetom : There's a lot of focus on the sanctions compliance of ‘third countries’ at present. But let's not forget that evasion requires goods to trade, and those goods come from these shores! ‘The UK business that shipped $1.2bn of electronics to Russia’ https://www.ft.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Mykines story is the UK-registered face of an evasion pattern the related coverage has documented from every angle: Russia sourcing controlled chips through third countries such as Turkey and the UAE, through e-commerce sites and Chinese middlemen, and through covert networks for EU-controlled dual-use microchips. What makes this FT report distinct is that the conduit was not a shadowy offshore trader but a UK limited partnership — Mykines Corporation LLP — operating out of a terraced house in Enfield, whose filings tie it to Nippon Klick LLP through shared current and former owners.
First-order effects
- UK authorities now have a named, addressable target: customs records put at least $982M of Mykines' $1.2B in Russia-bound shipments under export restrictions, putting Mykines Corporation LLP, its linked entity Nippon Klick LLP, and Vitali Poliakou — reported as exercising 'significant control' — under direct enforcement scrutiny.
- The Enfield registered address becomes evidence in itself, forcing scrutiny of how a terraced-house partnership cleared $1.2bn of exports through British customs without triggering controls.
Second-order effects
- Banks, freight forwarders and payment providers touching Mykines or Nippon Klick face de-risking pressure as counterparties once exposure is public, raising transaction costs across the UK's small-trader export channel.
- Other UK-registered exporters with similar ownership structures can expect the same customs-data treatment — the FT's method turns routine shipment records into a screening tool regulators and journalists can rerun on any name.
Third-order effects
- If enforcement follows the money-laundering path already mapped by the NCA's Russian crypto laundering network case, UK company registration itself becomes part of the sanctions perimeter — ownership transparency and 'significant control' filings shifting from paperwork formality to compliance infrastructure.
- The pattern points toward export-control regimes judged less on declared destinations than on verified end-use and custody chains, because the same goods keep arriving via civilian-electronics channels repurposable for military use regardless of what the paperwork says.
The trend: Sanctions enforcement is shifting from border declarations to forensic analysis of customs data and corporate registries, as controlled electronics reach Russia through nominally legitimate registered businesses.