Chinese Companies Forged Brand of Taiwanese Company to Avoid Sanctions

6 January, 2025 Su-34 bomber with bombs equipped with UMPK ????. Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense Chinese companies that supply servos for UMPC and Shahed UAV planning modules to Russia illegally use the name of the Taiwanese company TRC to avoid sanctions.

Public activist Vadym Labas reported about this in his investigation. According to the activist, after information was published about the supply of Taiwanese company TRC's elemental base for weapons production to Russia, sanctions experts and the Taiwanese public were involved in the investigation.

Companies from China evade sanctions

The investigation revealed that although the name of the Taiwanese company appeared in the procurement documents, the real TRC company had nothing to do with the parts. The real manufacturer of the servos was the Chinese company KST Digital Technology Limited.

An HS20 servo drive by KST Digital Technology Limited.

Photo credits: Vadym Labas

The servo drive that forms the basis of the control system in the UMPC planning modules can be found on the company's official website under the name HS20. The company also supplies servos used in Russian-made Shahed kamikaze drones. Since this company also supplies a significant part of its products to the US and EU markets, a multi-stage product disguise scheme was developed to avoid sanctions.

First, the products of the KST plant are formally sold to a fake Chinese manufacturing company called Kaiffeng Zhendaqian Technology (KZT). After that, KZT formally sells the goods to another Chinese company, UNIHUI INTERNATIONAL LIMITED, while changing the branding to TRC.

The "evolution" of the manufacturer's name between the gaskets. Photo credits: Vadym Labas

The published documents show how the name of the manufacturing company changes during the transfer between different proxy companies, but the name of the servo model remains the same.

After that, with the involvement of another proxy company, Shenzhen Biosen Bio-Tech, the products are transferred to Russian proxies Omni Trade and Dymir Trade. At the same time, Dymir Trade is a newly created clone of Dymir, which is already under sanctions.

A notification of payment for goods. Photo credits: Vadym Labas

From there, the components are delivered to TRV-Engineering, which makes purchases for the Russian arms company Tactical Missile Arms Corporation.

The civic activist notes that the expert community has never seen such a complex scheme of double rebranding.

However, it is already known that it is applied to other critical components for the Russian defense industry.

In particular, using the TRC brand.