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Part-time model Valeria Baigascina appears to have a jet-set lifestyle
High-tech equipment made by a British company worth $2.1 million (£1.6 million) was sold to Russian companies linked to the military, customs documents seen by BBC suggest News.
The documents say the British-made camera lenses were shipped by a company registered in Kyrgyzstan, apparently run by a swimsuit model.
British manufacturer Beck Optronic Solutions, which worked on the British Challenger 2 tanks and F35 fighter jets, told us it had not violated sanctions, had no dealings with Russia or Kyrgyzstan and that he was not aware of these deliveries.
Our investigation raises questions about the effectiveness of sanctions imposed on Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine.
The trail led us to Valeria Baigascina, a 25-year-old woman from the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan, who now lives in Belarus. A part-time model, she regularly posts about her jet-setting lifestyle on social media. Over the past two years, she has traveled to Dubai, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
Her social media gave no indication that she was also the director of a company that funneled equipment worth millions of dollars to sanctioned companies in Russia, our document search revealed customs officers.
According to details of the Belarusian registration, Ms. Baigascina was the founder and director of a company called Rama Group LLC. Established in February 2023, it is registered to an address in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, 3,713 km from its home in Belarus.
Both countries are former Soviet states with close trade ties with Russia. Belarus remains Moscow's main ally in Europe.
Trade data shows that since the introduction of sanctions against Russia in February 2022, UK exports to Kyrgyzstan have increased by more than 300%. Experts suspect that some goods are actually destined for Moscow.
Customs documents obtained by the BBC suggest the Rama Group made two shipments to Moscow of high-end optics that could be used in missiles, tanks and aircraft.
The equipment is shown on the customs form as being manufactured by Beck Optronic Solutions in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. The company manufactures high-precision lenses used in targeting and surveillance systems.
Although some of its lenses are used in healthcare and engineering, Beck's website details many military and defense applications.
Lenses and optical technology sold by Beck Optronics are specifically listed as goods that cannot be legally exported to Russia or require permission from UK authorities before a sale can take place.
The BBC has identified, through customs documents, a total of six shipments of products believed to have been manufactured by Beck worth a total of $2.1 million (£1.6 million) and transferred to Moscow via Rama and another intermediary company, Shisan LLC.
In December 2023 and January 2024, the Rama group carried out its two expeditions to Moscow classifying them as “rotating part of the camera”. These shipments were intended for Sol Group, a company based in Smolensk, 320 km southwest of Moscow, which was sanctioned by the United States.
It's unclear exactly which international route the goods took – documents indicate some of the shipments may actually have originated in Thailand.
Shisan LLC, another Kyrgyz company, was responsible for four further shipments of Beck Optronics products worth $1.5m (£1.1m).
Two of these shipments were for “short-wave infrared camera lenses” and were destined for the Ural Optical and Mechanical Plant, which manufactures bomb-aiming equipment and is also sanctioned due to its ties to the Russian army.
Rama Group and Shisan share the same address in Bishkek: a modern five-story building located in a prosperous part of the city. However, during our visit we were told that Valeria Baigascina was abroad on a business trip.
We found his number through his social media posts and told him our allegations.
Valeria Baigascina poses with a rifle
Ms Baigascina said she was the founder of the company but sold it in May. She denied the allegations, saying that when she owned it, “nothing like that was provided.” She then hung up.
Later, via email, she explained to us that the accusations were “ridiculous” and based on “false information.”
Our research shows that in May this year she sold the Rama Group to her best friend, Angelina Zhurenko, who runs a lingerie business in Kazakhstan.
Ms. Zhurenko told us: “Business activities are carried out exclusively within the framework of the current legislation of Kyrgyzstan. The company does not violate any bans. Any other information is false.
Angelina Zhurenko runs a lingerie business in Kazakhstan and also travels a lot
The director of the other intermediary company, Shisan, is called Evgeniy Anatolyevich Matveev. We submitted our allegations to him by email.
He explained to us that our information was “false” and that he ran “a company supplying exclusively civilian goods manufactured in Asian countries”.
He added: “This does not contradict the laws of the state in which I work and has nothing to do with US sanctions, because it is impossible to prohibit free trade in Asian products available for sale and upon delivery. »
There is no evidence that Beck Optronics was aware of these shipments or that the final destination of the lenses was Russia.
The company told us it had nothing to do with these shipments: “Beck did not ship anything in violation of UK export controls or UK sanctions. It had no relationship with any party or company in Russia, Kyrgyzstan or Thailand, did not know that shipments might ultimately be destined for any of these destinations, and did not ship anything to these destinations.
She believes some of the equipment listed was not even made by the company and that customs documents may have been falsified.
But these so-called exports are part of a much larger picture involving shipments from multiple sources.
Analysis of customs documents by Washington-based security think tank C4ADS suggests Shisan made 373 shipments via Kyrgyzstan to Russia between July and December 2023.
Of these, 288 contained goods falling under the customs codes of “high battlefield priority items.”
During the same six-month period, the Rama Group made a total of 1,756 shipments to Russia. Of these, 1,355 were for items on the “high priority battlefield items” list.
Its most recent deliveries, including electronic products from American and British companies, were to a Russian company called Titan-Mikro, which has been subject to American sanctions since May 2023 for its activities in the Russian military sector.
“When they sell this technology to a customer who is potentially a Russian end user, they have to understand that this is aimed at killing people,” says Olena Tregub of NAKO, Ukraine's independent anti-corruption organization.
She warns that flaws in the sanctions regime are costing lives.
“Without these technologies, these weapons would not fly. The brains of these ballistic missiles, the brains of these kamikaze drones, are made up of Western technology,” she says.
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David Cameron – then British Foreign Secretary – met Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubaev in April and urged him to strengthen the country's compliance with sanctions.
International authorities are aware of Kyrgyzstan's role in circumventing sanctions.
In April, then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron visited Bishkek and urged Kyrgyz authorities to do more to strengthen compliance with their sanctions.
The Kyrgyz president said he was convinced that Lord Cameron's official visit to his country would “give new impetus to the multifaceted cooperation between Kyrgyzstan and the United Kingdom”.
David O'Sullivan, the EU's special envoy for sanctions implementation, told us that efforts continue to end “illicit supply networks” and that “companies are required to carry out due diligence checks to understand who the end user is and where the “battlefield objects” ultimately end up.”
