In January, a large Russian betting company announced a lottery for its clients with a special prize: a Rolls Royce Cullinan.

Following Moscow'sfull-scale invasion of Ukrainein 2022, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and a number of other countries banned the export to Russia of cars valued above $50,000 -- around one-tenth of the starting price for a Cullinan, which can fetch closer to $1 million in Russia.

At the same time, major foreign automakers, including those that manufacture luxury models, closed their Russian factories and offices.

The $50,000 price tag in the bans was intentional, deliberately targeting high net worth individuals who might be more likely to have connections to the Russian state.

The general exodus of automakers from the Russian auto market, meanwhile, has helped change its makeup completely.

Now Chinese brands, previously fringe players on the market, account for around 70 percent of all new cars being put on the road.

But for all that, expensive Western-made luxury vehicles are still easily accessible to Russia's super-rich.

SEE ALSO:

Russia Smuggling US Plane Parts As Sanctions Ground Airliners

According to Russian customs data, around 1,300 vehicles worth $100,000 or more were brought into Russia between March 2022 -- when the Western bans went into effect -- and the present.

Who is doing that importing and how?

Systema, RFE/RL's Russian-language investigative unit, traced supply chains and found several companies that import vehicles via jurisdictions like South Korea, which has its own ban on luxury vehicle exports to Russia, Hong Kong, and Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country whose imports of cars from Europe have soared beyond all proportion during the war years.

The findings of Systema'sinvestigationsuggest that, as with other parts of the economy in President Vladimir Putin's Russia, having ties to the military and security services does not hurt when it comes to entering the sanctioned luxury car business.

Getting Around The Sanctions

In a direct response to the sanctions placed on the Russian economy, Putin in June signed a law legalizing parallel imports -- the import of goods without the right-holder's permission.

The law thus allowed for new import channels for many types of items, including high-end cars like Bentleys and Maseratis.

A lot for new cars in Moscow in June 2022

That didn't make trading in sanctioned goods legal outside Russia.

In 2024 alone, three individuals in Germany were sentenced to prison terms of between four and six years for exporting hundreds of luxury cars to Russia.

Last month in Lithuania, two Belarusians and two Lithuanians were detained on suspicion of similar activities.

But for the Russian auto business, the signal had been given.

In total, Systema identified 179 Russian importers and 220 exporters from 26 different countries that participated in schemes for importing prohibited vehicles between March 2022 and October 2024.

SEE ALSO:

How A Norwegian Company Fed Russia's War Machine Despite EU Sanctions

Most of the Russian companies Systema identified as importing luxury vehicles in large numbers were already involved in the auto business, selling sanctioned cars alongside the new, market-conquering Chinese brands.

But one didn't, and that obscure St. Petersburg-based company specializing in fiberoptic components turned out to have imported the most luxury vehicles of all.

Registered in a nondescript business center, Garant LLC'S pre-2022 revenue was modest, with the highest pre-war figure being 250 million rubles in 2020 (around $3.3 million at the rates of the time).

The company's website to this day continues to advertise itself as a purveyor of "electronic equipment and components."

Until the parallel import law went into effect, Garant, whose name translates from Russian as "guarantor," spent only $880,000 annually on imports.

Garant's sole supplier is Jiating Product Factory Limited in Hong Kong, run by Miao Dong, a Chinese national and resident of Shanghai.

Bentley cars are on sale at a showroom of a dealership outside Moscow in 2016.

Jiating was registered in 2013, although its website boasts that the company has been a "leading distributor" of "hard-to-find goods" for the past 15 years.

But between 2018 and 2021, Jiating's exports to Russia amounted to less than $1 million of goods per year and were overwhelmingly components for fiberoptic networks -- about half of which went to Garant.

In early 2022, Jiating seamlessly switched to luxury car exports for its top client, sending 305 automobiles worth $31.2 million in total, with 139 of the vehicles worth more than $100,000 each.

Russia's Security Types And The Auto Business

The founder and director of Garant, which officially employs just nine people, is Maria Kalenova.

At the same time as being Russia's leading luxury car importer, at least on paper, Kalenova is also a former military wife.

Her ex-husband, Aleksandr Stebakov, was one of three former cadets of the Military Institute of Physical Culture (VIFK) who beat up a 17-year-old on the street in St. Petersburg back in 2003, according to leaked police records seen by Systema.

SEE ALSO:

Russia's War On Ukraine Fuels Kyrgyz Passport Boom

All three were detained over that incident, but it seemingly didn't harm their career prospects.

One of the trio, Vladimir Niyazov, is currently the chief inspector of the Department of Physical Training and Sports of the Armed Forces of Russia.

Another, Sergei Lushnikov, went on to join the Federal Protective Service (known in Russian by its initials FSO and also translated as the Federal Guard Service), a body that inherited the mandate of the military and security agencies responsible for the safety of top Soviet officials and vital state assets.

At the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum in 2017, Lushnikov was one of the security officers charged with protecting President Vladimir Putin.

Sergei Lushnikov (right) pictured beside Russian President Vladimir Putin

Lushnikov's employment with the FSO could be relevant to Kalenova's entrepreneurial activities insofar as the body has an unofficial reputation of offering protection of a different kind -- to lucrative businesses, including those involved in import-export.

While Kalenova and Stebakov divorced in 2010, Lushnikov remained in Kalenova's circle of friends even after she remarried.

A photo posted on VKontakte shows him posing with Kalenova on the occasion of her 35th birthday party in December 2018.

Maria Kalenova and Lushnikov

But according to financial data reviewed by Systema, Garant is actually just an intermediary for Russia's largest auto dealer groups, Rolf and Major-Auto, who are the end customers for all the cars that the company imports from Hong Kong.

Founded by Russian businessman Sergei Petrov in 1991, Rolf played a key role in forming the post-communist Russian auto market.

But in 2023, Petrov's business was seized by the Russian state, with Umar Kremlev, a businessman who has headed the International Boxing Association since 2020, later revealed as Rolf's new boss.

Russian independent media outlets typically describe Kremlev as a businessman with close ties to Russian security services, as well as Russian sports.

A salesman adjusts wheel rims at an auto parts market in Moscow in June 2022.

In amedia investigationpublished last year, journalists from the Russian outlet Proekt used Getcontact -- an application harnessing crowdsourced phone data -- to find how a phone number used by Kremlev was saved by other users.

The entries they found included "Umar FSO," "FSO Umar," and other variations that implied a direct link between Kremlev and the FSO.

We Weren't There, We Don't Know!

For major Western automakers, the loss of the Russian market after Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was painful.

This was no less true for manufacturers of top-end vehicles, for whom the oligarchical elites of Moscow and St Petersburg were longstanding customers.

But many top car brands now insist that, from their perspective, Russia may as well not exist.

Table: Top 10 Automobile Brands Imported Into Russia Despite Sanctions

According to Russian customs data studied by Systema, Mercedes-Benz cars topped the list of luxury autos imported into Russia over a more than 2 1/2 year period after the sanctions entered force.

In a response to Systema's query, Mercedes-Benz said the company was studying the findings of the investigation and would make contact with "relevant authorities" if it found grounds for suspicious activity.

"As a rule, we prohibit the sale of our products to unauthorized intermediaries even outside the contractual territory," a spokesperson said, adding that "subsequent resalesoutside our authorized dealer network, especially of used vehicles, lie beyond our sphere of influence."

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), Porsche, Audi, and BMW supplied similar responses.

While Hong Kong was the "transit hub" for Garant's sanctioned car imports, several others have emerged since Russia's invasion.

Topping the list as far as October 2024 is South Korea, a major car manufacturing country in its own right, and one that has its own sanctions in place prohibiting exports of luxury vehicles to Russia.

Table: Top 10 Countries Exporting Sanctioned Cars To Russia

Meanwhile, Kyrgyzstan's boom in car imports from Europe and other Asian countries -- a tenfold increase compared to pre-war levels -- has raised plenty of eyebrows.

The country's pro-Russian government has said it is doing all it can to stop the flow of sanctioned goods to Russia, with whom it shares membership of the Eurasian Economic Union trade bloc.

But anothermedia investigationpublished this month by Novaya Gazeta Europe has spotlighted how figures in the orbit of Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov could be involved in the re-export of luxury cars to Russia.

Alexandre Prezanti, a British lawyer who spoke to Systema, noted that "no Russia" clauses that place a contractual obligation on importers in third countries not to re-export to Russia are only recommendations for goods such as cars in the United Kingdom.

Ilya Shumanov, the former director of Russia's Transparency International branch, told Systema that Brussels's rules on usage of the clause are stronger and covered by a ruling of the European Council.

For the moment, though, the steady trickle of expensive cars into Russia shows that the law of supply and demand is in the driving seat.

Garant LLC, Rolf, Major-Auto, Jiating Product Factory Limited, Bentley, and Maria Kalenova did not respond to questions sent by Systema.