The CEO of a Danish group was sentenced to four months in prison, and two companies from the group were fined five million euros for violating the European sanctions on Syria by selling fuel to the Russian Air Force. The Odense court in central Denmark found the company Dan-Pankering and its parent group Banker-Holding guilty of selling a total of 12,000 tons of fuel between 2015 and 2017 to two Russian companies. These large quantities of fuel, valued at approximately 90 million euros, were later delivered to Syria, where they were used to supply Russian fighters in the country.
The two Danish companies were fined a total of 34 million kroner (4.6 million euros). Keld Diment, the CEO of Banker-Holding, was sentenced to four years in prison, suspended. He left the court without making any comments, as reported by AFP.
In this rare trial concerning violations of the European sanctions on Syria, the prosecution had requested a two-year prison sentence for the group's manager along with a fine of 400 million kroner. The company’s lawyers and its manager pleaded not guilty, arguing that they could not control how their Russian customers used the fuel, as these customers were not subject to the sanctions. The European Union has imposed sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime since December 2011, with annual reviews. The sanctions include an oil embargo and the freezing of the Syrian central bank's assets in the EU.
