Sanctioned Supercars Still Delivered to Russia
Supercars from Hong Kong and friends in the Russian Federal Protective Service: Who and how imports sanctioned cars to Russia.
Investigation by "Systema"
Imports of Western luxury cars to Russia are officially banned, but they still appear on the streets of Russian cities. Sistema tracked supply chains, identified suppliers' connections with the Federal Protective Service (FSO, or Russia’s Secret Service) and asked questions to auto giants. Porsche and Mercedes-Benz have already begun internal audits.
In January 2025, a major Russian betting company announced a lottery for its customers with a fantastic grand prize: the Rolls Royce Cullinan. The price of such a car starts from half a million dollars and can go up to a million — but it's not even about the cost of a luxurious British car. According to the laws that are in force in Western countries, the import of such a car to Russia is prohibited.
The ban on the import of cars worth over 50 thousand USD into Russia was introduced by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and a number of other countries in March 2022, shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. Major global automakers have announced their withdrawal from the Russian market. Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, Land Rover — all whose products were so valued by Russian businessmen and officials, closed their factories and representative offices in Russia, and also stopped shipping products to the Russian Federation from their European and American factories.
They were replaced by Chinese sedans and SUVs. Russian dealers, who until 2022 sold exclusively American, European, Korean and Japanese cars, have switched to brands such as Cherry, Tank or Omoda. By November 2024, the share of new Chinese cars in the Russian market reached 68%. However, “banned” luxury cars from Europe and America still continued to appear on Russian roads.
In June 2022, Vladimir Putin signed a law on the legalization of parallel imports — the import of goods without the permission of the copyright holder. In particular, cars fell under it: from the popular Volkswagen, Ford, Nissan to solid Bentley and Rolls Royce and supercars Bugatti and Maserati.
Enterprising Russian businessmen have adopted a new scheme: on their websites, they directly write that they can bring almost any brand — just pay money.
How cars got to Russia
Sistema studied customs data and found that since March 2022, at least 1298 cars worth over 100 thousand US dollars each have been imported into Russia. All these cars were produced in countries that banned the export of their cars to Russia, and entered the country in transit through third countries.
Top-10 auto brands bypassing the sanctions on their way to Russia:
Mercedes-Benz 459 $76,621,657Land Rover 297 $54,204,415BMW 216 $26,975,262Porsche 119 $16,782,220Audi 61 $8,005,342Toyota 53 $6,079,442Lamborghini 18 $6,598,141Rolls-Royce 11 $5,380,919Bentley 16 $4,628,981Ferrari 6 $3,572,882
The total cost of these 1298 cars exceeded $214 million.
It was impossible to directly import so many luxury cars, so intermediary firms were used for deliveries in different parts of the world — from Turkey and the UAE to Kyrgyzstan, Jordan and even Mongolia. However, transit mainly went through five jurisdictions: South Korea, Belarus, Hong Kong, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan. More than 1,000 cars worth $166 million passed through these five “hubs” to Russia.
The most important importer
The main Russian importer of luxury foreign cars was a small St. Petersburg company specializing in the sale of components for fiber-optic networks — Garant LLC. The company is registered in an ordinary business center on the Petrograd Side, and until 2022, its financial results were very modest. The maximum pre-war revenue of Garant was 250 million rubles in 2020 ($3.5 million), while it allocated $880 thousand dollars for importing of various goods.
The only supplier of Garant is the Hong Kong company Jiating Product Factory Limited. Its head is 45-year-old Chinese citizen Miao Dong, who lives in Shanghai, one and a half thousand kilometers from Hong Kong. Jiating's official website proudly calls the firm “a leading distributor [of IT equipment components] for more than 15 years.” However, exactly this phrase was on the site in 2018 and 2019.
In fact, the company was registered in 2013, and until 2019, its website did not mention cars or spare parts. In 2018-2021, Jiating exported mainly components for fiber-optic networks to Russia, and the annual volume of these supplies did not exceed $1 million.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions have radically changed the situation. Since September 2022, the Hong Kong company has begun to supply cars to Russia — and 99% of these cars were sent to the same Garant. As a result, in 2022-2024, Garant received 305 cars from Hong Kong for a total of $31.2 million. Moreover, 139 of them cost over $100k each.
So the previously inconspicuous Garant with nine employees and a tiny office turned into the main supplier of elite cars for Russia. Who is behind this business?
Military athletes in the Russian car market
It is worth starting this story with a long-ago incident in St. Petersburg: in December 2003, three cadets of the Military Institute of Physical Education (ВИФК) beat a 17-year-old boy. The cadets' names were Alexander Stebakov, Vladimir Niyazov and Sergei Lushnikov. All three were registered in the barracks at 63 Bolshoy Sampsonievsky.
The cadets got away with this story with a hop-stop. Vladimir Niyazov rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and today is listed as the chief inspector of the Department of Physical Training and Sports of the Russian Armed Forces. Sergei Lushnikov also became a lieutenant colonel, only in the Federal Protective Service (FSO): officially, he is the deputy commandant of Smolny (the commandant's office is a division of the FSO responsible for the security of the government of St. Petersburg) and in 2017 participated in the protection of Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg Cultural Forum. And the third, Alexander Stebakov, married in 2006 to Maria Kalenova, who took his surname and in 2018 founded and headed the Garant company. At that time, both Maria and Alexander were registered in the VIFK dormitory.
The paths of the Stebakovs parted ways in 2010, but Maria's connection with the institute stretched at least until 2020: even after marrying for the second time, she was still listed in the ВИФК dormitory. FSO Lieutenant Colonel Lushnikov and his wife were at the celebration of her 35th birthday.
As Sistema found out, Garant was an ordinary intermediary for car dealers. The main buyers of parallel imports through Garant were the two largest auto holdings - Rolf and Major Auto. It was they who received most of the Hong Kong cars, and on their websites they still offer customers to buy cars of Western brands. Structures affiliated with Rolf in 2022 and 2023 paid almost 3.5 billion rubles for imported cars, Major Auto - 1.1 billion rubles.
According to anti-corruption expert Ilya Shumanov, Rolf is associated with the FSO, because it is with this special service that the current owner of Rolf, Umar Kremlev, is associated. Stories about the protection of various types of business by the FSO have been repeatedly described in independent media. The Proekt publication, for example, wrote about Vladimir Putin's bodyguard, who is closely associated with the betting business, and Novaya Gazeta wrote about the share of the former head of the FSO Yevgeni Murov in the business empire of St. Petersburg businessman Dmitry Mikhalchenko.
A former top manager of one of the leading car dealers (who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons) told Sistema that compared to the "pre-war" volumes, the current deliveries are incomparably smaller. Rolf alone used to import Western cars worth between $3 billion and $4 billion a year, a hundred times more than in recent years.
Despite the limited supply and high prices, status buyers continue to buy such cars. So, after the start of the big war, Sergei Matvienko, the son of the Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko, acquired a new car. The Range Rover SUV is registered to his company.
Mongolian Porsches, Kyrgyz Ferraris
According to Sistema's calculations, a total of 179 Russian importers and 220 exporters from 26 countries participated in the schemes for the import of banned cars. Most cars ended up in dealerships: although most Russian car dealerships switched to Chinese brands, customers still demanded British SUVs, German sedans and Italian sports cars. Therefore, many large dealers did not refuse Western luxury, even if it had noticeably risen in price.
The Avtodom company, which operates in Moscow and St. Petersburg, although it has added a dozen Chinese brands to its assortment, continues to offer Audi, BMW, Land Rover and Lamborghini on its website, and, apparently, it works: in 2022-2024, the company imported 79 cars to Russia for a total of $16 million. They took a little bit of everything: Mercedes-Benz, Lamborghini, BMW, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Rolls-Royce. The geography is also extensive: seven different countries were involved in the supplies, mainly Hong Kong, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
Not far behind “Avtodom” is the Moscow company "ЖЗЛ" (lierelly, “The Life of Remarkable People”). Formally, the company specializes in parallel imports of commercial vehicles and sells Italian Fiat Ducato minibuses. This did not prevent it from supplying 67 Land Rovers and two Audis to Russia through Kyrgyzstan for a total of $11.7 million. Three more cars arrived directly from the UK in September 2023. At the same time, on the Avito ad site, the company “ЖЗЛ” lists almost all well-known Western car brands and promises to bring any of them.
In the east of the country, one of the main importers was the Irkutsk group of companies owned by Pyotr Khomyakov and Inna Buzdalina (VC-Irkutsk LLC, MC-Irkutsk LLC and LC-Irkutsk LLC). Formally, these companies are listed as dealers of the Chinese brands Chery and Seres. Nevertheless, they imported 81 sanctioned cars worth about $11 million - mainly through South Korea and Mongolia.
Another major importer, the GTK Auto company operating in Moscow and St. Petersburg, brought 70 cars worth $11 million to Russia. Basically, the cars went through Belarus, but, without stopping in Minsk, continued their way to Russia. Several cars, however, were delivered through Armenia. On the official website there is the same offer to supply a car under parallel imports and an impressive set of Western brands.
A little less was delivered to Russia by the logistics company Premium Source — 53 cars worth a little more than $ 10 million. Here, as in the story of Avtodom, there are several intermediary countries, the main of which are Hong Kong and South Korea.
And what about the West?
European regulators are closely monitoring attempts to circumvent sanctions. In 2024, three people were sentenced to real terms in Germany for exporting hundreds of cars to Russia. In February 2025, a similar case occurred in Lithuania: two Belarusians and two Lithuanians who supplied cars to Russia and Belarus were detained there.
British lawyer Alex Prezanti explained to Sistema that the UK and the EU recommend exporters to include a special “no Russia” clause in contracts with third countries, prohibiting the re-export of goods to the Russian market. “In the EU, this clause has become mandatory, but only for high-priority battlefield goods and some other critical dual-use goods. As far as I know, this does not apply to cars,” he added.
Western automakers, in turn, told Sistema that they are taking measures to prevent their cars from entering Russia in circumvention of sanctions:
“Porsche AG complies with all applicable economic sanctions against Russia. Since the introduction of sanctions, not a single new car has been delivered to Russia. Cars with the appropriate VIN numbers are classified as private purchases in different countries. It is clear that a resale was made through these private buyers, possibly in circumvention of the sanctions provisions. We will report these incidents to the authorities and will provide them with full cooperation.”
— Porsche, Germany
“JLR stopped selling cars to Russia and Belarus in February 2022. Sanctions compliance is a corporate priority as well as an obligation for our third-party retail network, and we investigate every allegation of this nature.”
— Jaguar Land Rover, UK
“Neither AUDI AG, nor the Volkswagen Group, nor joint ventures export cars to Russia. Audi is doing everything possible to prevent unauthorized trade. AUDI AG itself, as well as all its suppliers and trading partners, are obliged to constantly use the entire sphere of their influence to prevent illegal re-export to Russia.”
— Audi, Germany
“The dealer network, including contract importers of BMW vehicles, is contractually obliged to comply with all national and international legal regulations, including EU export control rules. The BMW Group is taking various measures to prevent this type of import, among other things, analysing sales data around the world for anomalies, immediately reviewing and prosecuting suspicious cases.”
— BMW, Germany
“Mercedes-Benz strictly complies with the applicable sanctions and export control regulations. We take all references to possible violations of sanctions and export control regulations very seriously and take appropriate action. This includes the information you provide. We are currently scrutinizing this data; The verification is ongoing and will take some time. In case of substantiated suspicious cases, we will involve the relevant authorities. As a general rule, we prohibit the sale of our products to unauthorized intermediaries and outside of the contracted territory. We do not tolerate violations of contracts and legal obligations by our partners, we take targeted measures up to the termination of business relations.”
— Mercedes-Benz, Germany
Garant LLC, car dealers Rolf, Major-Auto, Avtodom and Parameter, Hong Kong-based Jiating Product Factory Limited, automaker Bentley and Maria Stebakova did not respond to questions from Sistema.