Ireland

Dublin-based company hit by US sanctions wave targeting Russia

Cubit Semiconductor Limited has made dozens of shipments of sensitive electronic components to sanctioned Russian manufacturer JSC Mikron, US says

Cubit Semiconductor has offices in Ireland and Korea, its website states. Photograph: agency stock

Barry J Whyte
Fri Feb 23 2024 - 19:05

A Dublin-based company has been sanctioned by the US department of the treasury in a major new wave of sanctions against Russia to mark the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.

In a press release on Friday, the US treasury department’s office of foreign assets control (OFAC) said: “Ireland-based semiconductor supplier Cubit Semiconductor Limited has made dozens of shipments of sensitive electronic components” to JSC Mikron, a Russian manufacturer and exporter of microelectronics. Mikron was itself sanctioned in March 2022.

Cubit Semiconductor Limited, which is based in Dublin, has been added to the sanctions list published for “operating or having operated in a sector of the Russian Federation economy determined to support Russia’s military-industrial base”.

The directors of Cubit Semiconductor Limited are two Korean nationals, Jae Sik Ban and Joung Ok Hong, documents show. In company documents, Jae Sik Ban also goes by James Ban.

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Cubit Semiconductor has offices in Ireland and Korea, the website states. The Irish company lists a residential house in Stillorgan as its registered address.

When contacted by The Irish Times, Mr Ban said he had not been aware of the company’s inclusion in the sanctions list and insisted that Cubit did business only with companies in the European Union.

In a follow-up email he said: “We are not working for the military industrial [base]. We are doing for Europe customer site for semiconductor industry only.” He referred The Irish Times to the company’s website, which listed a number of customers in Germany, France and the UK.

In relation to the question of Cubit’s trade relationship with JSC Mikron, he said those components were semiconductor parts and were not for military use.

The new sanctions package is the biggest since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In a press release, OFAC said the sanctions marked “Russia’s two years of unprovoked and unlawful full-scale war against Ukraine and in response to the death of opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Aleksey Navalny”.

Janet Yellen, the US secretary of the treasury, said: “Russia’s economy and military-industrial base are showing clear signs of weakness in part due to the actions we, along with our partners and allies around the world, have taken to support Ukraine’s brave defence.”

Cubit Semiconductor is not the only Irish-based entity or individual to have been included in the OFAC list in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In November two Irish businessmen were added to the list for their relationship with a financial services company in the United Arab Emirates called ARX Financial Engineering Limited.

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