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22 - The Flider Affair

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Pavel Flider is a Russian émigré and naturalized American citizen who allegedly used his California company Trident International to transship advanced electronics to the Russian Federation. According to court documents, Flider did this using a series of fronts located in Estonia and Finland. The scheme was caught when U.S. customs officials intercepted an outgoing shipment at the San Francisco[1] airport containing 15 Field Programmable Gate Arrays from the American (FPGA) company Xilinx. Xilinx’s Field Programmable Gate Arrays are the Spartan series.[2] The Xilinx Spartan series of products includes a programmable semiconductor that has repeatedly been found inside Russian military drones in Ukraine for years.[3] Flider’s network appears to have sent at least hundreds of the devices to Russia based on seizure data published by American investigators. [4]

Flider sent the packages out of the country with false labeling. The high-end semiconductors used in Russian military drones seized by U.S. customs for example were labeled as “power supplies”.[5] The equipment first went to an Estonian freight forwarder of whom Trident was their only client.[6] The shipments then went through Finland, before being handed to a Saint Petersburg company for distribution amongst Russia’s defense industrial base. Money was sent back via a series of bank accounts to mask the source of the funds.[7]

Footnotes

[1]https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/about-bis/newsroom/press-releases/1213-trident-tdo/file

[2] https://archive.ph/z0dWB

[3] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-missiles-chips/

[4] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3520133-FLIDER-TRIDENT-COURT-DOCS%20and%20https:/www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-10-02/pdf/2018-21446.pdf

[5] https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/about-bis/newsroom/press-releases/1213-trident-tdo/file

[6] ibid

[7] ibid

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Sectoral Guidance

Sectoral Guidance

  • Sectoral Guidance
  • Introduction
  • Strategic Competition
  • Implications at the National Level
  • Trends in Technology Acquisition
  • Sectoral Analysis
  • Red Flags
  • Compliance and Due Diligence
  • Potential Additions to ICP
  • Use of Distributors
  • Conclusions
  • Annex 1: Case Studies
  • Annex 2: Further Resources and Guidance
  • Annex 3: Due Diligence Tools and Techniques
  • Sectoral Guidance PDF

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