- BMW admits some employees illegally sold new cars to Russia despite existing sanctions.
- The automaker claims it dismissed these employees over their involvement in the sales.
- Over 100 cars were smuggled into Russia before BMW discovered and stopped the activity.
When Russia launched its assault on Ukraine in early 2022, governments around the globe responded with an unprecedented wave of sanctions. Among these measures was a ban preventing automakers, including BMW, from selling cars to Russia. Evidently, a few bad actors at the automaker were doing it anyway. BMW has now confirmed that those involved have been dismissed.
Gray market imports happen all of the time. That’s where a third party gets involved. In this case, it would be someone who had the right to buy a BMW and the willingness to sell it to an interested party in Russia. What’s not legal is for BMW itself to sell that car to someone in Russia.
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Nevertheless, that’s allegedly what happened according to reports from Germany. In fact, according to the German edition of Business Insider, certain employees at BMW managed to get over 100 cars over the border and into Russia via its Hanover location before the automaker caught wind of it. On Sunday, BMW admitted that it found “irregularities in car exports” related to this whole situation.
“In addition, the BMW Group has decided to dismiss the employees who bear the greatest responsibility for this,” the company said in a statement. Evidently, the brand took several steps to prevent this sort of sale but the employees found a way around those measures. It’s unclear at this point if BMW will face any sort of legal trouble as a result.
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Since the E.U. banned sales of high-end cars to Russia in March of 2022, the market has shifted. Gray-market imports have become a bigger business. Interestingly, BMW says it’s even working to prevent those sales from happening as well. One can imagine that it’s a gargantuan task.
We’ve seen countless examples of individuals trying to get high-end cars into Russia since the war started. In fact, it seems like Russians really want the Cybertruck despite several failed attempts at bringing one into the country. Clearly, the appetite for prestige automobiles remains undeterred by geopolitical complexities.
So, while BMW cleans up this PR disaster, don’t expect gray-market sales to slow down anytime soon. After all, if there’s one thing humanity loves more than rules, it’s figuring out how to break them—preferably in a car with heated leather seats and a zero-to-sixty time that makes you forget the world is on fire.
