The searches took place on September 8 in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse in the Rhineland-Palatinate region and in Vienna, according to the Kaiserslautern prosecutor's office. Law enforcement agencies from Germany, Austria and Belgium took part. Both suspects declined to give testimony.
According to the investigation, from the autumn of 2022 to the end of 2024 they exported 53 passenger cars and six semi-tractors to Russia in violation of the EU sanctions regime. To conceal the final destination of the shipments, the vehicles were allegedly routed through third countries, in particular Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia.
The Kaiserslautern court, acting on a request from the prosecutor's office, authorized the seizure of the suspects' property worth approximately 7 million euros. The investigation considers this sum to be the presumed proceeds of the illegal exports.
During the searches in Germany, two vehicles - a Porsche and a Mercedes-Benz - were seized, and 85,000 euros in cash was seized in Vienna. A further 278,000 euros was frozen in bank accounts in Germany, Austria and Belgium. Three hunting rifles and ammunition were found at the businessman's premises in Neustadt, and a separate investigation has been opened against him over a possible violation of the weapons law. The investigation continues.
The European Union banned the export of cars worth more than 50,000 euros to Russia in March 2022, and the export of electric and hybrid vehicles in June 2023.
Supplies of luxury cars to Russia in circumvention of sanctions are widespread. According to Reuters, nearly 130,000 cars from brands of countries that have joined the sanctions against Moscow were registered in Russia in 2025 alone, and almost half of them were made in China. Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, more than 700,000 such cars have been sold on the Russian market.
In early 2026, investigators at TriTrace Investigations established that since March 2022 at least 214 premium-brand cars - Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati and Rolls-Royce - worth 5.9 billion rubles had been imported into Russia in circumvention of EU and UK sanctions. Most of the vehicles went through Belarus (64), Turkey (45) and Kazakhstan (41).
This is not the first such case in Germany. In March, a court in Wurzburg sentenced a car dealer from Bavaria to six years in prison for supplying 111 luxury cars to Russia; according to the investigation, the vehicles reached employees of the FSB, the FSO, Rosneft and the Russian presidential administration. In July 2025, an employee of a car dealership in Hesse received five years in prison for selling 71 luxury cars in circumvention of sanctions.