Технологии для Apple и для армии РФ: двойные стандарты группы беларусских компаний
What world-class Belarusian leader brands do you know? Belaz, Wargaming with their World of Tanks, the Viber app, which has a Belarusian background, the Izovac company… You don’t know anything about this one? Let’s be honest with you, we were not aware of it either before this investigation. Meanwhile, this Belarusian company contributed to one of our time’s most high-profile technological revolutions. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc.“What we're going to do is get rid
of all these buttons and just make a giant screen”. This is a first-generation iPhone released in 2007. It’s a shame the glass is broken, but its screen still works. It’s hard to remember today how much it divided the world of mobile devices into “before” and “after.” Time included it in the list of the most influential devices in history, Forbes wrote that it transformed society, and The Guardian claimed that it changed the entire world. So, at the annals of the history of this revolutionary smartphone, half of all touchscreens were made using equipment manufactured by… the Belarusian company Izovac.
Vitali Khomich, deputy director of the Izovac group of companies “When you tap with your finger, and the phone knows where you pressed, it’s this touchscreen, specifically this trace — which includes Izovaс’s trace”. Later on, the Belarusian company’s achievements included the production of iPhone screens and touchscreens for iPads. A World Bank report prepared in 2020 demonstrates that Izovac holds about 20% of the global market share of equipment for vacuum coating of device touchscreens. The Belarusians boast a diverse portfolio that includes numerous globally recognised tech giants. Source: Belteleradiocompany The company’s clients include Apple, Tesla, Samsung, LG, Sharp and other famous brands. Wow. That’s a success!
But why is the Belarusian Investigative Centre telling you about this campaign in the first place? Because it’s only one part of the story. We found the other one, hidden behind these beautiful articles. Izovac cooperates with Russian defence-related enterprises subject to sanctions, supplying them with the necessary equipment and technologies.
During the hostilities alone, the volumes reached $200 million. The company’s revenue grows leaps and bounds every year. But first things first. This investigation was prepared in partnership with the Washington-based global security nonprofit C4ADS, the Russian independent media outlet Vazhnye Istorii, the Lithuanian media outlet 15min.lt, and the Ukrainian project Skhemy, with the support of CyberPartisans.
I’m Alena Charniauskaya. Buckle up, we’re taking off. THE GLOBAL PLAYER This story began in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the USSR, When several Minsk Radio Engineering Institute employees joined forces and founded a vacuum technology company called Izovac. They entered the East Asian market in the 1990s, during which time Izovac technologies first found their way into Apple products. Belarusian-developed vacuum equipment was used to apply protective coatings to the screens of the first kinescope iMacs. The company slowly moved from applying protective films to manufacturing vacuum equipment and later began assembling entire production lines for its clients.
While interviews with Izovac representatives often provide detailed accounts of collaborations with well-known brands, they usually offer only vague statements about Russian buyers and the specifics of those partnerships. Mikhail Darashevich, CEO of the Izovac group of companies “The smaller machines on the right are primarily supplied to the Russian market for various specialised applications. However, they can also be quite large, with some weighing up to 1.5 tons”. We also discovered larger shipments to Russia. Customs records show a shipment of a 6-ton plasma etching machine from the Belarusian company Izotec-M to the Russian company NM-Tekh, which is based in Moscow. The latter is under US and EU sanctions for its ties to the defence industry.
According to the official website of Russia’s special economic zones, where NM-Tekh is listed as a resident, the company supplies the civilian market with advanced electronic components. However, in January 2024, NM-Tekh significantly expanded its scope by adding weapons and ammunition production to its portfolio. The plasma etching machines installed by Belarusians at a Moscow enterprise produce microcircuits, which are currently in short supply in Russia. Therefore, the supply violates American export controls on dual-use goods.
You may ask, what does the company Izotec-M, which sent the machine to Russia, have to do with the Izovac company that helped produce iPhone screens and cooperates with world-famous tech giants? Good point. Let’s take a short digression and understand the structure of Izovac, and then we will get back to this deal. STRUCTURE AND OWNERS Izovac is not a single legal entity but a group of companies. At least four legal entities of this group are registered in Belarus. Izovac is engaged in vacuum equipment production. InterNanoTekhnologii produces optical elements and spray coating.
Doprealnost develops augmented reality video modules. Izotec-M, already known for its deliveries to Russia, specialises in metalworking. Further on, there are foreign companies associated with Izovac In Russia, there is a limited liability company called Engineering Group.
Keep this one in mind, since it is a very important company in our investigation. In Lithuania and Germany, there is I-Photonics. There is also a company in Taiwan — in some interviews, managers call it Izovac Taiwan, and in others — Green Coating. Before the war began, there were more companies with the Izovac brand in their names. The Russian and Lithuanian companies were previously known as Izovac Engineering and Izovac Photonics, but following the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, both rebranded to remove the name Izovac from their titles. We also figured out who owns these companies.
The Izovac company has three owners, all of whom are Belarusian citizens. Uladzimir Shyrypau holds a majority stake of 56.7%, holding a PhD in technical sciences and co-authoring several patents, including one for touch glass used in displays.
The remaining shares are significantly smaller: Mikalai Liauchuk owns 24.5%, and Siarhei Maryshau holds 18.8%. Both are also co-authors of a number of patents in the Patent Database of the Eurasian Union.
These three Belarusians also have a stake in the InterNanoTekhnologii company in exactly the same proportion. The third company — Izotec-M — is owned equally by the Izovac company and the Taiwanese company More Tech International. BANNED TRADE Now that we understand the structure of the Izovac group of companies, Let’s return to the 6-ton delivery to Russia’s NM-Tekh.
This transaction took place in two stages. In December 2023, the Hong Kong-based Smart Kit Technology, currently under US sanctions, sold an AMAT Centura Super E chip manufacturing unit to Izotec-M. Another company associated with Izovac — Engineering Group— helped carry out this deal.
It acted as the recipient and declarant of the equipment at Russian customs. In the same month, Izotec-M resold this equipment to the Russian sanctioned NM-Tekh. Thus, the Chinese Smart Kit Technology violated the US sanctions regime, and the Belarusian company did that twice.
First, the sanctions imposed by the United States, and second, American control over the export of dual-use goods. We know this is the same piece of equipment since the two deliveries bear the same product codes, unit name, description, and event logic. Moreover, in the first delivery, Izotec-M appears as the contract holder. The unit was purchased in China for $3,6 million and sold for $600,000 more expensively, that is, for $4,2 million dollars. In total, from September to December 2023, Izotec-M supplied NM-Tekh with US-made dual-use goods worth $4.5 million.
Previously, from November 2022 to August 2023, supplies worth an additional $1.3 million of Belarusian and Chinese products were arranged. About $6 million in total — keep this figure in mind. We’ll return to it a bit later. In the meantime, let’s talk about the entities that helped arrange the delivery. We are now in Taiwan, Taipei.
Just look at that beauty! And now, let’s go to look for this mysterious Taiwanese company. Under the guise of customers, we headed to the Taipei office of More Tech International Corporation, a Taiwanese company that owns half of Izotec-M. And here we are, at the location of the Taiwanese corporation involved in modernising the Russian company NM-Tekh.
As you can see, this area appears to be what one might describe as a residential district. And here, in fact, is its address... this house. It’s 371. 1... 1F? We are looking for... but this is 2F. We were very lucky, as it was a weekend, and the company’s office would usually be closed. Yet one of the employees of More Tech International’s purchasing and sales department had arranged a meeting with an acquaintance, and so he was there.
He confirmed to us that their company had a contract with the Russian NM-Tekh and that they cooperated with Izovac. “You also work with a company NM-Tekh?” “Yes, before”. “Before? Not anymore?” “No, but the...” “Sorry?” “But one project”. “One project, okay. Last year, right?” “Several years.” “Several years? In 2023?” “We started before the war”.
“Oh, you started before the war. But you are not working with them anymore, stopped after the war?” “Not stopped, but...” When we inquired about purchasing the equipment directly from the US or China, we were told it was unlikely at that time. However, he offered to connect us with a Chinese company that could assist.
If we wanted a new machine, it wouldn’t be American — it would be produced under the import phase-out program. “Okay, so you think it won’t be a problem to get used, and used would be from US directly or via China?” “After the war, we don’t have this kind of business. Sometimes, there are Chinese that <...> from the government”.
“So you need to have permission from the government?” “Protection”. “Oh, protection, okay. So how does it work? You can put this in touch with the Chinese partners, or it goes through you? From China through you?” “Directly with Chinese”. “Directly with Chinese. Okay. All right”. “Nowadays, the two presidents have to sit down and talk.
I hope the situation can be improved in the next few months or few years”. “Yes, we can go back to business”. “...Otherwise, it is too hard for us”. “Okay, with the Chinese partners, how would it work? I write to you what we need, and then you deal with the Chinese partners, or you put us in touch with the Chinese partners?” “I am gonna see what kind of equipment, and then...” “Oh, yeah”. “And we can see if we can do it for you or not. <...> Chinese friends”. Does the supply of used American equipment violate US export controls and sanctions when Hong Kong, Belarusian, and Russian sanctioned companies are involved in the scheme? We asked Columbia University Senior Research Fellow Richard Nephew to comment on this matter.
“US sanctions and US export control rules cover used items. US sanctions and US export control rules cover items whether or not they’re going through intermediaries or whether or not they’re going directly from US companies. And it’s the responsibility of US companies to ensure that the end users are who they say they will be”. The expert explained that all companies involved in this scheme can be held accountable. Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University “It’s not always the case, but usually speaking, foreign companies are addressed through sanctions policies, as opposed to necessarily prosecutions that take place in the United States”. “So I would say the first thing that would happen is sanctions.
Sanctions would be the usual response to consistent violators of export control rules and policies”. We contacted Applied Materials, the company whose equipment was supplied to the Russian-sanctioned NM-Tekh, and the Hong Kong company that sold the unit to the Belarusians, seeking their comments. However, by the time our investigation was published, they didn’t respond. So, what do we know at this point? A Belarusian company from the Izovac group, whose clients include world-famous brands such as Apple and Samsung, purchased American equipment from a Chinese company to produce microcircuits that are in short supply in Russia and sold it to the Russian company NM-Tekh, which is under Western sanctions. The total value of the supplies amounted to nearly $6 million.
Most of the transactions violate American export controls on dual-use goods and sanctions But this is just the beginning of our discoveries. There are more to come. For now, let’s dwell on who owns NM-Tekh, what it does, and why it was blacklisted by the United States and the European Union. PARTNER OF RUSSIAN DEFENSE INDUSTRY The company NM-Tekh was registered in Russia in 2019. Initially, its authorised capital was 4 million Russian rubles, but over the next 6 years, it grew 65,000 times to almost 250 billion …The owner of NM-Tekh is the Russian state-owned VEB.RF corporation. According to data for 2020, the company’s board of directors included former Russian Deputy Prime Minister and current Special Presidential Representative for International Cooperation in Space Yuri Borisov and Deputy Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Vasily Shpak.
Officially, the company is engaged in the production of bank cards, SIM cards, and passport chips, as well as developing microcircuits for mobile c ommunication systems and for running internal combustion engines. As mentioned earlier, however, the company’s list of authorised activities includes a section on the production of weapons and ammunition. The value of NM-Tekh for the Russian industry is best described by how swiftly the company was included in the sanctions list. This happened just 3 weeks following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On March 15, 2022, 19 days after the start of the war, the European Union introduced the fourth sanctions package, which covered 62 Russian legal entities from the aviation and military industries, companies producing dual-use goods, shipbuilding and mechanical engineering. NM-Tekh was among them. In the “Notes” section, the American document specifies the reason for including NM-Tekh in the “blacklist” as its connection with Russian state-owned Vneshekonombank.
The supplies of Belarusian Izotec-M to NM-Tekh totaling almost $6 million, which we mentioned earlier, are just the tip of the iceberg. NM-Tekh transfers significantly larger amounts to another Russian company associated with Izovac — Engineering Group A source in the Russian tax service provided us with documents showing that NM-Tekh paid Engineering Group $12.3 million in 2022 and another $93.6 million in 2023. The descriptions attached to the invoices show that, in addition to supplying equipment, the Belarusian company’s representative office helps the sanctioned Russian state-owned enterprise set up chip and microcircuit production It turns out that one company from the Izovac group, Izotec-M, supplied valuable equipment to produce microcircuits, while the other created production chains and trained NM-Tekh to handle the supplied equipment. The last invoice between the two companies was paid in July 2024, and in August, Engineering Group was included in the US sanctions list. Mikhail Darashevich, CEO of the Izovac group of companies “Any customer, whether from Russia or Asia, can come to us with a specific task that needs to be solved.
And our company will develop both the equipment and the technological process that will address the task”. In addition to NM-Tekh, we found 35 more Engineering Group clients related to the production of military products. 17 of them are part of Rostec, the largest Russian arms manufacturer. Rostec accounts for half of Russian state defence contracts. The products of these 35 clients include guidance systems for Kalibr cruise missiles.
During the first two years of the war alone, Russia launched 843 such missiles into Ukraine. On July 6, 2023, Lviv was attacked by Kalibr missiles. One missile hit a residential building, killing 10 people and injuring 42. The youngest person killed in the attack was 21 years old, and the oldest was 95.
Other clients of Engineering Group are also engaged in weapons production. They make Orion attack drones or airborne systems for aircraft and helicopters involved in the war against Ukraine. Almost all of these companies are under sanctions by the United States, the European Union, and other Western countries.
In 2022, Engineering Group fulfilled contracts with Russian military enterprises worth $50 million. In 2023, this figure rose to $108 million, with an additional $23 million added in 2024. Altogether, the total over the three years amounts to $181 million. Where did the company Engineering Group get these goods from? We found out it supplied the Russian market with products from the Izovac group of companies and foreign goods subject to international sanctions. According to customs data, in 2023–2024, Engineering Group purchased at least $32 million worth of banned equipment manufactured in the United States, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Korea. Among the largest deliveries were plasma etching units, similar to the equipment from Applied Materials, which we have already mentioned, and other specialised equipment for processing semiconductor materials.
Belarusian companies from the group we’re already familiar with are keeping pace with their Russian counterpart. Between 2022 and 2024, InterNanoTekhnologii and Izovac worked with at least 30 Russian military-industrial complex companies, 9 of which are under Western sanctions. Here are just a few examples of that cooperation.
They supply lenses to a company that produces military optical sights. Coloured glass is delivered to Radar MMS, a manufacturer of target-seeking devices for cruise missiles. We can list them for a couple of hours because the list includes more than a thousand deliveries. The Belarusian companies’ customers produce high-explosive guided missiles, fire control systems for aircraft and tanks, reconnaissance systems, drones, and combat avionics Two Belarusian companies alone have shipped almost $10 million worth of goods to enterprises linked to Russian military production. A study of customs data showed that the overwhelming part of supplied components were marked as “made in Belarus.”
If we dig into old Izovac videos, we can find evidence of cooperation with Russian military enterprises even in pre-war times. An advertisement released in 2012 shows a commercial offer to supply equipment to the Novosibirsk Instrument-Building Plant. Since the end of 2023, this enterprise has been under US sanctions as one of the main manufacturers of optics for the Russian armed forces and the FSB. In another Izovac corporate video published in 2013, we can see two Federal Handbooks of the Defense Industrial Complex of Russia. The федеральный-справочник.рф website describes this textbook as the only publication that provides an authoritative and comprehensive view of the state and prospects for the development of the defence sector of the Russian economy.
In the same video, one of the Izovac employees directly states that the company’s products and technologies are used in weapons Uladzislau Radzivonau, Izovac employee “Today, we manufacture equipment for applying optical coatings tailored to specific customer requirements. These products are later used in the military-industrial complex, such as laser systems, night vision devices, and various applications across civilian and defence sectors”. It is all the more logical that, after the war began, golden years have come for the Izovac group of companies. In 2020 and 2021, InterNanoTekhnologii reported revenues of 3.5 million and nearly 5 million Belarusian rubles, respectively. By 2022, this figure had increased to 9.5 million; in 2023, it reached almost 11 million rubles The financial growth of the Izovac company is also impressive.
Revenue doubled each year: in 2021, it reached 13 million Belarusian rubles, rose to 27 million in 2022, and climbed to 53 million in 2023. We contacted the owners of the Izovac group of companies and asked questions about their cooperation with Russian military enterprises. Pavel Paliashchuk, director of Izotec-M “Belarusian Investigative Centre? What kind of organisation is that?” “This is a journalistic media outlet”.
“Is this a media outlet registered in the Republic of Belarus?” “Not in the Republic of Belarus”. “Goodbye”. Our partners from the Ukrainian project Skhemy contacted an expert from the Kyiv School of Economics, who explained the technical component of using Belarusian technologies and Izovac-made products in Russian weapons.
Olena Bilousova, Senior Research Lead on Sanctions at the Kyiv School of Economics “Yes, first off, the supply of such installations is banned. This is very important because it allows Russia to build up new capabilities, that is, expand production and purchase new equipment, which allows for building more weapons. As a result, they are already included on sanctions lists, at least those of the EU and the US. It’s also important to highlight their direct relevance to weapons production. The notion of dual-use is quite tenuous in this case, as very few non-military applications demand such precise equipment.
In theory, microelectronics could be one such sector— since it also requires thin-layer deposition— but Russia’s technological industry in this area is minimal CLEAN” BUSINESS IN EUROPE When we described the structure of the Izovac group of companies, we mentioned related foreign companies, including those registered in the European Union. These are Lithuanian and German companies with the same name: I-Photonics. The Lithuanian company is trying hard to hide its connections with the Belarusian Izovac.
15min.lt journalist posing as a customer: “And I wonder if you have any relations with third countries?” Vitali Khomich, director of I-Photonics: “Look, it depends on which third countries we’re talking about. We export most of what we do, of course. But it’s mainly Europe, the USA, and Canada.
We have a lot of projects in Taiwan and Korea. As for the East, no. We don’t work with our eastern neighbours”. 15min.lt journalist posing as a customer: “So, you’re okay doing business with Russia?” Vitali Khomich, director of I-Photonics: “No, no, no. Part of our team once left there, and everyone closed their business. That was back in 2021”
Yet we found connections between European and Belarusian companies. Three people, Yauhen Shyrypau, Andrei Liauchuk, and Yauhen Khakhlou, own both Lithuanian and German I-Photonics. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Two of the three are the sons of the owners of the Belarusian Izovac. Moreover, all three worked simultaneously in Belarusian companies of the Izovac group and owned the Lithuanian company at least until September 2024. The same applies to I-Photonics director Vitali Khomich: he worked at Izovac until September 2024. Another interesting detail showing the connection between the companies is that the Belarusian Izovac website now automatically redirects to the website of the Lithuanian company I-Photonics.
By the way, it was previously called Izovac Photonics. The company changed its name following the controversy with Rostec funds. In April 2022, the Lithuanian Financial Crimes Investigation Service sequestered 1.2 million euros from the I-Photonics account because,
quote: “the funds were transferred to the account of the company mentioned above from a firm associated with Russian citizen Sergey Chemezov, who is on the European Union’s sanctions list”. Chemezov is the CEO of Rostec and a member of the bureau of the Supreme Council of the United Russia party. He is also a close associate of Putin, with ties dating back to their time serving together at the KGB residency in Dresden. At that time, the company was still called Izovac Photonics, and its director Vitali Khomich explained that, after the war, the Lithuanian company decided to quickly withdraw money from the Russian company account. Therefore, the payment was sent in the form of a loan because this was, quote: “the easiest way to withdraw the money”.
As the Lithuanian company noted, “there was no plan to repay this loan or make any payments to Russia”. Our partners from 15min.lt visited the office of I-Photonics. Vitali Khomich, director of I-Photonics “On the day 24th, the board of Izovac decided that the company in Moscow would stop operation. All the money we have there in the accounts for the operation of this company shall be withdrawn from Russia totally.
The next day, the easiest way to withdraw the money without banking control in Russia was a loan. They gave the loan and chose a new company business as the recipient because this company needed investments to grow and start the business”. Yauhen Kakhlou, co-owner of I-Photonics “Okay, it was my decision to transfer the money because I was CEO of Izovac at that time”.
Following the seizure of the accounts, I-Photonics went to court to demand the return of 1.2 million euros. Yauhen Kakhlou, co-owner of I-Photonics “In the beginning, we opened this company as a part of the Izovac company. But when the political situation started to get worse, we, with some people, decided to go out and fully use our, at that time, joint local company as a company, which now became our new separate company. It doesn’t matter how it was before, but now it’s like this, and that’s it”.
“Some customers were former Izovac customers. When we opened the new company, we cut part of the company with people, with customers with whom we already worked <...> That’s the reason why we grew so fast...” “If it wasn’t for political influence, we would never split.
We would never do this. It’s only one reason because it’s impossible to work in Europe and Belarus at the same time right now” The Belarusian Investigation Centre (BIC), in collaboration with journalists from the 15min.lt portal, submitted an inquiry to Lithuania’s Financial Crimes Investigation Service, requesting a comment on the current status of the case concerning the seized assets of I-Photonics.
We received the following response: Lithuania’s Financial Crimes Investigation Service “The company appealed the agency’s decision to the administrative court. In December 2024, the Regional Administrative Court rejected the company’s complaint as unfounded. The above-mentioned court decision has not entered into legal force, and an appeal has been filed against it”. Laurynas Kasčiūnas, deputy chair of the Committee on National Security and Defence of the Lithuanian Seimas “Obviously, all mechanisms for controlling a company in Lithuania exist and are in place. They need to be reviewed to see whether such a company can actually operate in Lithuania, especially if there is evidence of its connection to the Russian military-industrial complex. For my part, of course, I will do everything as a parliamentarian to contact the responsible authorities to reassess whether such a company has the right to operate in Lithuania”.
Vitali Khomich, director of I-Photonics “Do you supply anything to Russia or Belarus?” “No, it’s impossible”. RECORD-BREAKING COLLABORATION Based on our calculations, 6 companies of the Izovac group have received almost $200 million under contracts with companies working for the Russian military machine since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We also reached out to the international partners of the Izovac group of companies to find out their attitude towards cooperation with a company whose Russian representative office is under US sanctions, while other entities cooperate with the military enterprises of the aggressor country and help circumvent sanctions.
By the time our investigation was published, however, no response followed. What can we conclude from today’s investigation? The unique Belarusian company Izovac, which helped create such iconic products as the iPhone and iPad while working in Western markets, cooperates on a large scale with Russian military enterprises. It sells them its in-house production, extends services, and helps circumvent Western sanctions by purchasing valuable Western-made equipment for their needs.
At the same time, after the war began, it tried to avoid being included under sanctions and continue working in the global market. To this end, it changes the names of companies and removes all references to the connection of international companies with Belarus. Thank you for watching this video. If you want to learn about other cases of power abuse, subscribe to our channel. Of course, only if it is safe for you.
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2025-04-26 21:55
