A Danish court on Tuesday fined two companies more than $5 million for breaking an EU embargo by selling jet fuel to Russian companies that was eventually used in fighter planes in Syria.
After a two-month trial, the court in Odense ruled that “the deliveries objectively were violations of EU sanctions” targeting the Bashar al-Assad regime.
The director, the company Dan-Bunkering and its parent company were found guilty of selling a total of around 172,000 tonnes of jet fuel to two Russian companies on 33 occasions between 2015 and 2017.
The fuel, worth nearly 90 million euros, was then delivered to Syria, where it was used to power Russian fighter jets.
The two companies were fined a total of 34 million kroner ($5.2 million, 4.6 million euros) and Bunker Holding boss Keld Demant was given a four-month suspended sentence.
Demant made no comment as he left the court, said an AFP correspondent at the scene.
The company and its director had pleaded not guilty, arguing that their Russian clients were not affected by the sanctions and they could not control what their customers did with the fuel.
However, the court found that the Demant should have realised that it was “highly likely that the jet fuel would be used by the Russian military in Syria”.
The Danish company made the sales through its office in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave surrounded by Germany.
The two Russian companies involved had never ordered jet fuel from Bunker Holding before the Russian military operations in Syria in 2015, and Demant was aware that they were general agents for the Russian Navy, the court said.
The deliveries took place in the eastern Mediterranean, sometimes via ship-to-ship transfers.
The Russian companies would then unload the cargo in the Syrian port of Banias, the court said.
The prosecution had requested a sentence of two years in prison and fines of 400 million kroner.
Speaking to AFP, prosecutor Anders Rechendorff said he was “very satisfied” and described the ruling as historic.
“The jet fuel came into Syria and were put into Russian fighters, and they bombed in favour of President Assad,” Rechendorff said.
In his closing arguments, presented in late November, he argued that “even negligence can lead to a conviction, and the defendants should have analysed what was going on much more thoroughly”.
