The British digger maker JCB, owned by the billionaire Bamford family, continued to build and supply equipment for the Russian market months after saying it had stopped exports because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Guardian can reveal.
Russian customs records show that JCB, whose owners are major donors to the Conservative party, continued to make new products available for Russian dealers well after 2 March 2022, when the company publicly stated that it had “voluntarily paused exports” to Russia.
The data raises questions about the accuracy of JCB’s statements on its business in Russia and relationship with its biggest dealer there, Moscow-based Lonmadi, and that company’s former owner, UK-based JVM group.
JCB has repeatedly said that it stopped exporting products to Russia and JVM companies after 2 March 2022 – less than a week after Putin sent troops into Ukraine.
However, customs records collated by a trade data provider show the serial numbers of dozens of vehicles, worth millions of pounds, which appear to have been supplied to companies in Russia after that date.
When the Guardian presented a sample of those records to the Staffordshire-based manufacturer, it admitted that JVM continued to collect diggers from JCB’s factories for months after the voluntary pause, but said that was due to contractual obligations.
JCB also confirmed that the manufacturing of some of the equipment continued after that date.
JCB’s lawyers said: “Any collection of goods by a JVM company after 2 March 2022 was pursuant to contractual obligations already entered into and completed or substantially completed prior to that date.”
The company also denied any inconsistency or inaccuracy in its public statements.
jcb’s chair, anthony bamford, 78, is one of the uk conservative party’s biggest donors and a close ally and financial backer of the former prime minister boris johnson.
lord bamford was made a conservative peer in 2013, before retiring in march. the business was founded by bamford’s father, joseph cyril bamford, and according to the sunday times rich list the family is worth £5.9bn.
JCB, one of the biggest privately held businesses in the UK, has 22 factories around the world, including in India and China, and had a sizeable presence in Russia at the time of the invasion in February 2022.
The Bamford family’s business dealings have also come under scrutiny in recent months after the Guardian reported that Lord Bamford and his brother, Mark, could be hit with a bill for more than £500m to settle a long-running tax investigation by HM Revenue and Customs.
Shipments to Russia
JCB sells its products all over the world, but a significant – albeit unquantified – proportion of its sales came from Russia before the Ukraine invasion. After the invasion Bamford said, via lawyers, that he fully supported the UK government’s position on Russia. JCB’s lawyers said the company took “voluntary steps to pause the manufacture and supply of new orders to Russia from 2 March 2022” – a time when no relevant sanctions were in place.
The company said it also closed down an assembly facility and other business operations in Russia, at considerable cost, and “suffered a very significant economic loss” through its voluntary actions. It also offered to house 70 Ukrainian refugees in company homes in Staffordshire.
JCB’s business in Russia increased through a partnership with Lonmadi and JVM, which was owned by a Briton, Max Skillman. Trading under the Lonmadi and Kwintmadi names, the dealership grew to employ more than 1,000 people, mainly in Russia, and briefly propelled Skillman into the ranks of Britain’s wealthiest businesspeople. JCB’s sales in Russia continued to expand after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014.
In July 2022, the Observer revealed that Lonmadi was dealing with a subsidiary of Gazprombank, an arm of the Russian gas company and which was and remains under UK sanctions. A lawyer for Skillman said at the time that he had not broken any sanctions laws.