15 September 2026 · Dual-use goods diversion
The forwarder who filled in the paperwork
In June a federal court in Brooklyn sentenced the former western regional manager of a freight forwarder to 18 months. She had pleaded guilty to conspiring to ship industrial oil and gas equipment to Russia through intermediary countries, using falsified export documentation to do it.
Separately, a court in Kansas sentenced a former vice president of a trading company to 32 months for exporting controlled avionics to Russian end users without licences.
Neither defendant manufactured anything or owned the goods. Both sat in the middle of the chain, at the point where an end user is declared. That is the position from which a diversion is arranged, because it is the only point at which the destination on the paperwork and the destination in reality can be made to differ.
The pattern
This is dual-use goods diversion: controlled items are exported to an intermediary in a non-sanctioning jurisdiction and re-exported onward, with the end user misdeclared at the first hop. The financial trace is trade finance for electronics and machinery through transhipment jurisdictions.
Which of these, on a trade finance file, would most concern you about a buyer in a transhipment jurisdiction?
One tap. The answer appears straight away.