A Spanish wine export company run by a Russian-born matriarch and her children allegedly shipped sanctioned chemicals to Russia, including substances used in nerve agent and explosives production, according to an OCCRP investigation.

Maria Oleinikova, now a Spanish citizen, and her children Irina and Vyacheslav were arrested in February 2024 during a Spanish police operation that seized 13,000 kilograms of chemicals at the Port of Barcelona. Spain's Interior Ministry said the raid, dubbed "Operacion Probirka" or "Operation Test Tube," was part of an investigation into illegal chemical supplies to Russia.

Oleinikova and her children run Complexe Sancu, a Spanish company that exports wine, beer, cider and liqueurs to Russia. But Russian import data reviewed by reporters shows the company also shipped chemicals to Russia in possible violation of EU sanctions imposed after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

"Some shipments of chemicals — including nitric acid and acetone, both used in the manufacture of explosives, and diethylamine, a chemical involved in the manufacturing of the nerve agent VX — had already left Spain for Russia," police told OCCRP.

Russian chemical company links

Oleinikova majority-owns Catrosa Reactiv, a Russian chemical company that received at least 36 shipments of sanctioned chemicals from Spain between 2022 and 2024, according to import records. One shipment came directly from Complexe Sancu and contained around $3,650 worth of sodium hydrogen carbonate, prohibited for export from the EU to Russia in April 2022.

Catrosa Reactiv says on its website that it "successfully operates in the Russian chemical reagents market" and supplies products to laboratories and raw materials to industry. The company was founded in 2006 and taken over by Oleinikova's husband two years later. Oleinikova became its majority shareholder in 2015.

Most other shipments to Catrosa Reactiv came from Scharlab S.L., a Barcelona-based Spanish company majority-owned by Werner Scharlau, a German living in Spain who was among those arrested in February. The 32 shipments from Scharlab contained 14 chemicals worth $15,000, all subject to EU export bans from April 2022 to June 2023. They included $8,200 worth of N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), the same solvent seized at Barcelona port, plus $5,800 worth of isopropanol and $2,550 of hydrogen peroxide.

Sanctioned defense clients

Leaked transaction data shows Catrosa Reactiv's clients in Russia since 2022 included at least six sanctioned entities linked to weapons production, the defense sector, and the Russian military, according to the investigation.

Among them was the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, known as GosNIIOKhT, which has been sanctioned by the EU and US for its involvement in the development and production of chemical weapons including Novichok, the toxic nerve agent used by Russian operatives for assassinations abroad.

Other clients included the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, which developed the first Soviet atomic bomb; the Scientific Research Institute of Applied Acoustics, sanctioned by the US for "carrying out research and development of military products"; explosives manufacturer SKTB Technolog, a contractor for the Russian Ministry of Defense; and the 18th Central Research Institute, known as Military Unit 11135, which is part of Russia's GRU military intelligence service.

Miguel Ángel Sierra, a professor of organic chemistry at the Complutense University of Madrid and former member of the scientific advisory board of the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, explained why the chemicals were sanctioned.

"These have been banned by the European Union because they are industrial products," he said. "For example, there are many processes you can't carry out, including the preparation of explosives, the preparation of pharmaceuticals, and the preparation of many other things, without having some of these products."

Investigation status

Spain's Audiencia Nacional, a court that deals with terrorism and major crimes, confirmed that Oleinikova and her two children are among nine suspects currently under investigation for "smuggling banned substances." All nine suspects have been released while the investigation continues, and no one has been charged with a crime, the court's press department said.

A Spanish police source involved in the investigation said authorities suspect Oleinikova was an "intermediary" who arranged the shipments. The officer was authorized to speak to the press, but not to be identified by name.

Oleinikova declined to comment because the case is still under investigation.

Customs loopholes

Experts say EU customs systems are insufficient to deal with the bloc's broad sanctions on chemical exports to Russia.

In international shipping, exporters label goods using broad group identifiers known as HS Codes, which can cover both banned and permitted substances. This makes it possible to export a chemical under an HS Code that does not identify the presence of a specific banned substance.

Elina Ribakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said HS Codes including sanctioned products are supposed to be flagged as high risk and checked more closely by customs officials. But in practice, this doesn't always happen.

"The question is whether the product is correctly classified under its appropriate HS Code and whether it is actually being checked," she said.

Even though the EU and Spain have created additional code numbers to add detail to international HS Code categories, Ribakova said it's still "very hard to pin down a product" as they tend to be grouped.

"Europeans don't have the infrastructure to check more holistically something that is not a nuclear or very specialized weapon," she told OCCRP, adding that these limitations make it "relatively easy" to export sanctioned products.

False destinations

In the Spanish case, exporters mixed batches of sanctioned chemicals inside larger shipments of legal substances, or listed false destinations on customs paperwork, such as Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, to disguise the fact that shipments were headed for Russia, investigators told OCCRP.

One investigator said evidence shows the shipments did not in fact pass through those countries, and that the companies listed as recipients were fronts. Instead they went overland to Russia via other countries, including Poland and Belarus.

Import records show Catrosa Reactiv received one shipment of the sanctioned chemical NMP in 2023 that originated in Spain, but was routed via a Kyrgyz company, NK Muras LLC. That shipment was manufactured by one of the companies under investigation by Spanish authorities.

According to the import records, the supplier acting on the "order" of NK Muras was Vlate Logistik LLC, a Belarusian transport and storage company sanctioned by the EU in December 2024 for its proximity to President Aleksandr Lukashenko's regime.

In 2024, Complexe Sancu sent at least one shipment of NMP to NK Muras. Separate transaction data indicate that Catrosa Reactiv paid NK Muras more than $240,000 in 2023 for three shipments of unspecified pharmaceutical ingredients.

Neither NK Muras nor Vlate Logistik responded to requests for comment.

The Oleinikova family also runs Cavina Vinoteca, a wine bar in Barcelona's Poblenou neighborhood that has drawn positive reviews online since it opened last year.