The world leader in the production of welding equipment and materials remains in Russia, maintains factories there, and supplies its goods to Russian Gazprom through the public procurement system. The National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) has added the American-Swedish industrial company Elektriska Svetsnings-Aktiebolaget (ESAB) to the list of international sponsors of the war.
The company has been operating in Russia for more than 20 years and has created more than 6,000 jobs there. ESAB has more than 150 distributors represented in all federal districts of the Russian Federation and also has two plants and a technology center in Russia that provides technology development, training, and equipment demonstration.
As part of Russia's import substitution program, these plants produce Russian and ESAB branded welding materials, as well as electrodes, wires and fluxes. In this way, the company helps the terrorist state to cope with the consequences of the sanctions imposed on it, and also provides technological capabilities to the Russian Federation.
In June 2022, the company officially announced that it would continue to operate in Russia. "One of the most popular questions for our team and me in particular is whether we plan to stay in the Russian market. The answer is unequivocal: we will continue to work!" said Alexey Nuzhny, CEO of ESAB Russia and CIS LLC. For his part, Aleksey Belikov, Director of ESAB Welding Materials, pointed out new opportunities and the need to increase production and expand the local range of products manufactured in Russia.
Such statements by ESAB's top representatives demonstrate not only a clear desire to continue doing business with the aggressor but also possible ideological support for its actions against Ukraine.
In 2023, the company also continued to present and announce new high-tech welding equipment of its own production in Russia.
ESAB operates in Russia through Esab LLC. At the same time, the company did not publish its financial report for 2022 in Russia. Instead, from February 24, 2022, to October 2023, the company imported goods worth more than USD 60 million to Russia. These included materials, equipment, spare parts, and welding tools from Germany, China, Hungary, South Korea, Vietnam, Sweden, Austria, India, and Turkey.
In the Russian domestic market in 2023, products under the ESAB brand will continue to be supplied through the public procurement system. The consumers of ESAB products are enterprises of the fuel and energy complex of the Russian Federation: Gazprom Methanol LLC, Gazprom Transgaz Grozny LLC, etc.
ESAB continues to actively support the technological capabilities and economy of the Russian Federation and sponsor the war against Ukraine. There have been no attempts by the company's management to condemn Russia's war against Ukraine.
The NACP is the body responsible for promoting the development of a compliance system in the private sector. During compliance procedures, contractors are subject to integrity checks, including compliance with socially responsible business practices in accordance with OECD standards. The list of "International Sponsors of War" on the War and Sanctions portal is a powerful reputational tool for achieving integrity of supply chains in the international dimension, withdrawal of international business from Russia, and thus reducing the financial and technological capacity of the terrorist country to kill Ukrainians. One of the platform's "levers of pressure" is cooperation with the World-Check database, which is used by banks and insurance companies to assess risks. That is why for global companies, the consequences of being on the list are worse than continuing to do business with the aggressor country.
