Both the company and their legal advisers feared that the trade would lead to a breach of sanctions. Nevertheless, the maritime equipment was sent to Russia in July 2022.
The Norwegian company ended up sending potentially sanctioned goods to Russia in 2022. Illustrative photo from Moscow. Photo: NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA / AFPPublished: Published:
9. mars
The Tønsberg company Scanmar sent maritime equipment to Russia in the summer of 2022, despite the boss’ express wish to stop the trade.
When the goods were finally sent, both Danske Bank, the law firm Wiersholm and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had advised them not to send the goods, warning that could be in breach of the sanctions rules.
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This is revealed in a judgment from an employment court case in the Agder Court of Appeal, which was handed down in December.
The case ended with an employee of the company being dismissed for breaching the duty of loyalty. He is said to have defied his boss’s repeated orders not to carry out the shipment.
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The employee sued Scanmar, which develops and sells bridge systems and sensors to the fishing industry, to get his job back.
The man lost in two court cases. Tønsbergs Blad mentioned the case when the verdict was ready.
The verdict has been appealed to the Supreme Court, but has not yet been processed, the man’s lawyer Per Vinje tells E24. It is therefore not legally binding.
The employee was also the first to notify the company internally that they could be at risk of evading sanctions.
Discounted Russia trade
The contact with the Russian buyer started four days before Russia went to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A dealer for the Russian shipping company Severnaya Zvezda contacted a Russian-speaking seller in Scanmar, with a request to buy equipment for a fishing boat.
This salesman is not the same as the man who ended up in a lawsuit against his former employer.
The Scanmar seller offered a 30 percent discount on the trade, and the offer was accepted by the Russian dealer in spring 2022, according to the verdict.
But the advance payment was stopped, because it came from a Russian bank. The Russian company then asked to change the invoice recipient to its agent in Turkey.
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Got questions from the bank
A lengthy email correspondence between the now dismissed employee and the company’s owner and general manager, Henning Skjold-Larsen, is reproduced in the judgment.
Henning Skjold-Larsen has not answered E24’s inquiries about this matter.
The e-mail discussion focused on whether the goods should be sent to Russia. The shipment, with payment via a Turkish intermediary company, could appear to be circumventing the sanctions provisions, the employee and the boss agreed.
At the time, approximately NOK 9 million of the company’s year-end order reserves were linked to Russian customers, the judgment states.
In 2022, Scanmar had a turnover of NOK 64 million.
At the same time, Scanmar received an inquiry from Danske Bank, which wanted to know why money had entered Scanmar’s account from a Turkish company.
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The following week, the employee had been in verbal contact with a consultant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), who is said to have said that Scanmar was in danger of breaking the sanctions rules if they let a third party facilitate the shipment.
General manager Skjold-Larsen was even more clear: “That order is stopped immediately!”, he wrote in an e-mail to the employee.
He was also critical of the 30 per cent discount, which he referred to as “completely contrary to Scanmar’s board resolution”.
The employee replied a couple of hours later, completely in line with his boss, that ”