18 – The Sabirov Affair

“The sanctions they applied on myself, on my companies and on my friends are absolutely unfair, absolutely fake and absolutely wrong” 48-year-old Ilias Sabirov told Reuters after allegedly caught selling radiation hardened chips to Russia without a license.[1] Radiation hardened chips, which require an export license due to their military uses, are one of the more sought-after items by would-be Russian export busters. Russian Vice Premier Yuri Borisov, who oversees Russia’s defense base for the Kremlin, has said that Moscow was able to produce everything it needed for space flight and rocketry domestically during the Soviet period – but after Perestroika, Russia became ever more reliant on Western components. After 2014, Borisov says “radiation hardened [devices] first and foremost” became difficult to acquire.[2] Sabirov saw this as a business opportunity when he began shipping the devices to Russia in 2015.[3]

Allegedly, Sabirov owned a business in Moscow and therefore could not directly import radiation hardened electronics from the United States. However, the chips could be shipped to Bulgaria. Sabirov allegedly conspired with two Bulgarian businessmen and a Texas company where the Bulgarian company would act as an intermediary.[4] The Texas company sold radiation hardened chips to the Bulgarian intermediary and falsely wrote on the end-user agreement that the Bulgarian company, rather than Sabirov’s Moscow business, was the end user.[5]