No law, no means: Maldives may be unable to police flow of restricted goods to Russia

But whether violations of unilateral American and European sanctions constitute breaches of Maldivian law, or if the Maldives has the capacity to identify the goods, are both unclear. 

The authorities are establishing the accuracy of the WSJ report and action would have to follow, Chief Government Spokesman Mohamed Hussain Shareef 'Mundhu' told reporters at an informal briefing on Saturday. But he cast doubt on the ability of Maldives Customs to inspect transit cargo.  

"For example, how would we know what kind of chip is inside this phone?" he asked.

Mundhu denied claims attributed to Western officials in the WSJ report that the Maldives government was "under increasing pressure" from the US and Europe to shut down the transit route. The Maldives works closely with international security agencies, he said.

Contacted by the Maldives Independent, the Russian embassy declined to address the WSJ findings. "Russia considers anti-Russian sanctions illegitimate and ignores them. According to the international law, sanctions can be imposed only by the UN Security Council," an official from the embassy in Colombo said.

In the absence of a United Nations Security Council sanctions regime, unilateral measures adopted by individual states do not carry automatic force in Maldivian law, which appears to require UNSC designations for freezing assets or restricting trade. But states are required to establish controls on the transit of dual-use goods that could contribute to weapons proliferation. 

The Maldives foreign ministry and the Maldives Airports Company Ltd, the state-owned operator of the Velana International Airport, did not respond to requests for comment. 

MACL, the most profitable state-owned company, earns handling fees and fuel margin on the traffic. It reported a record 126 tonnes of freight in a single day in July.

The Malé route is not a new discovery. In May 2023, the US Bureau of Industry and Security suspended the export privileges of a freight forwarder called Intermodal Maldives, a local company that was registered weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Between May and October 2022, Intermodal routed 212 consignments of mostly aircraft parts to Russia, which was not the destination on export control documents, according to the BIS.   

Nikkei Asia reported in July 2023 that about 400,000 semiconductors made in the US had been shipped to Russia through the Maldives in the year after the war started. The volume was second only to China. The value of US$53.6 million for the chips represented a fifth of the Maldives' total merchandise exports in 2021. The shipments rose sharply after Aeroflot resumed direct flights from Moscow, Nikkei Asia found. 

Based on air waybills, a cargo manifest and logistics company emails, the WSJ investigation uncovered a similar pattern. When the daily flight by the Russian national carrier lands every morning, local middlemen clear US, European and Chinese goods through Customs. The Aeroflot aircraft departs for Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport about two hours later. Maldives Customs officials only check the paperwork because the goods never formally enter the country. According to the WSJ, the original seller's name is omitted from a new waybill issued in the Maldives.

The semiconductors routed through VIA have both civilian and missile-guidance applications. Other goods include aircraft parts, aerospace fasteners and optical instruments used in satellites. Some of the Western goods reach sanctioned Russian entities including the country's largest domestic airline. 

WSJ highlighted the mismatch between official Maldivian exports of tuna worth US$2,300 to Russia from 2022 to 2025 and the restricted goods worth "hundreds of millions of dollars". Imports from the Maldives shot up from less than US$7 million in 2021 to more than US$630 million in 2022, trade data collected by a US research firm showed.

The report named two Maldivian companies, Freight Care and Go Investment, as handling the paperwork.

Freight Care's managing director acknowledged handling transit cargo to Russia but denied knowingly shipping anything weapons-related. "We do not support any war," Hussain Waheed was quoted as saying. 

WSJ found no trace of Freight Care at either registered address, both in office buildings flanking the Aeroflot office. The address for Go Investment was an electronics shop shared with several other registered companies. 

Nikkei found something similar in 2023. There was no sign of the company or its staff when reporters visited Intermodal's listed office in Malé.

A senior official at Go Investment told the Maldives Independent that the company only runs an electronics shop and imports goods for sale in the country. It does not hold a cargo or logistics licence and could not have moved a transit consignment through the airport, he argued. "How can it be done without a licence or permit or anything?" he asked.

"Our name has been used for airway bills or something," he said, suggesting that such documents could have been created without the company's knowledge because its information was publicly available. He denied that Go Investment holds any documents or agreements with any company involved in the trade. 

When the company learned last year of goods brought into the country under its name, it reported the matter to MACL, he said. "MACL said at the time to get that information by requesting it from the airline it came from," he added. 

On one side of the geopolitical tightrope the Maldives walks, Washington and Brussels have listed several third-party intermediaries over the past three years, instead of pressing the host nations. The 2023 order against Intermodal showed that the US is willing to act against a Maldivian company, cutting it off from American suppliers. Harsher measures apply to a company's banking, which correspondent banks tend to notice. 

On the other side, Russia has been the second-largest source market for tourists since 2022, representing a market share of 15 per cent this year with 212,927 visitors as of 6 September. 

In February 2025, Russia's ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Levan Dzhagaryan, rebuked former President Mohamed Nasheed over his praise for the Maldives voting in favour of Ukraine at the UN. Nasheed later apologised later after the envoy observed that it was Russian tourists rather than Ukrainians who "inflate the budget of Maldives during their stay on this marvellous archipelago."