Small retailers to sell Apple gadgets in Crimea despite ban

MOSCOW, Jan 22 (PRIME) -- Small Russian retailers will continue selling Apple products in Crimea despite the U.S. company’s ban, which comes in force on February 1, as they will buy devices in the southern Russian cities of Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don, Mobile Research Group’s analyst Eldar Murtazin said Thursday.

An industry source said that Russian companies, which signed contracts with Apple, resell gadgets to middlemen working on the territory that is not subject of discord with Ukraine. The middlemen resell goods to Crimean retailers registered as Russian entities. The scheme is legal, but its application may raise prices of Apple products in Crimea by 10–20%, the source said.

On Wednesday, Apple forbade its partners to sell its devices in Crimea due to the new sanctions against the peninsula, which the U.S. government adopted in December 2014.

Murtazin said that all foreign technological companies, whose products are exported to Crimea, may face difficulties.

“Officially, sales on the Crimean territory should be terminated by the largest IT companies, such as Microsoft, SAP and Oracle, however, it could become a reason for serious problems on the Russian market as a whole,” Murtazin said.

A source from a company in charge of sanctions control said that the document on sanctions issued by the U.S. government creates a complicated legal collision, because Crimea is part of Russia from the point of view of Russian law.

“Most of vendors of equipment and software work in Russia via partners that sign agreements enabling them to sell their goods across the whole country. It’s unclear on what basis partners should be banned from selling some types of products in Crimea,” the source said.

Murtazin said that compliance with demands of the U.S. government may evoke legal claims both from the Russian state and from companies-partners.

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