The Lithuanian Customs is looking into whether sanctioned fertilisers are being shipped from Uzbekistan to Lithuania, an investigative journalism centre Siena reported on Friday.
Data collected by Siena and its foreign partners indicate a discrepancy of 72 million US dollars between fertiliser trade volumes officially declared by Lithuania and Uzbekistan from March 2022 to October this year.
The Customs Department has informed Siena that it is investigating the discrepancy in the countries’ fertiliser trade statistics and that it has submitted an inquiry to Uzbekistan’s officials.
“It will then become clear whether the suspicions of potential circumvention of sanctions and possible trade in sanctioned fertilisers are justified,” the department told Siena.
According to the United Nations Comtrade database reflecting member countries’ official trade statistics, Lithuania reported imports of fertilisers from Uzbekistan worth 107.5 million US dollars between March 2022 and October 2023. However, Uzbekistan’s figures show that it exported fertilisers worth 35.2 million dollars to Lithuania during the same period.
Siena notes that while Uzbekistan has a well-developed fertiliser industry, it is possible that the country is being used as a conduit to export sanctioned goods, including Belarusian fertilisers, to the European Union.
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