According to import and transit statistics from the Estonian Tax and Customs Board (ETCB), the volume of high-risk goods imported and transiting through Estonia has decreased significantly. High-risk goods refer to products whose actual origin is subject to justified suspicion.
Ursula Riimaa, Deputy Director General for Customs at the ETCB, stated that in 2025, the main focus has been on timber products, gases, and other raw materials arriving from the Russian border. “As the EU market remains largely closed to Russian businesses, efforts to bring sanctioned goods into the EU continue. While previously these attempts relied on relatively simple schemes, today’s supply chains are far more complex – production is moved to third countries, and raw materials are mixed to conceal their Russian origin. Our goal is to identify these new evasion schemes and ensure that prohibited Russian goods do not reach Estonia or the EU market,” Riimaa explained.
“For certain categories of goods, specific high-risk countries have been identified, for which we apply extensive control across the entire product group. In the case of wood products, such risk countries include Kazakhstan, China, Georgia, and Turkey. As of today, we have all the necessary risk information regarding plywood imports from China, Georgia, and Turkey. Through international cooperation, factories have been identified in Kazakhstan that falsify the origin of plywood destined for the EU border,” Riimaa explained.
In line with customs authorities in the other Baltic states, the ETCB does not accept intermediate storage, transshipment, or vehicle swapping in Russia during the import of plywood and other wood products from third countries, as this significantly increases the risk of origin fraud.
At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, the ETCB identified a new trend – a significant increase in plywood imports from Kazakhstan and China. As a result, full customs checks were implemented on these shipments starting in February, both for imports and exports. These controls had a deterrent effect: plywood imports from Kazakhstan dropped by approximately 20%, while imports from China decreased more than tenfold.
Regarding wood shipments from Georgia, a thorough verification of origin was carried out in cooperation with Georgian authorities. No sanctions violations were detected.
In 2025, the ETCB carried out a total of 618 timber shipment inspections. As a result, 23 violations were identified, also 79 shipments were immediately turned back at the border. Additional violations were discovered in shipments that were initially allowed entry but later subjected to further origin verification during customs clearance. In these cases, the actual country of origin was found to be Russia, and 39 timber shipments were returned from within Estonia.
To date, the ETCB has initiated over 100 proceedings for origin fraud related to customs declarations concerning timber shipments from Kazakhstan. Through international cooperation, it has been determined that in many cases, the level of processing carried out in Kazakhstan was insufficient to confer Kazakh origin. The ETCB will continue post-clearance origin verifications for shipments from both China and Kazakhstan to detect new potential origin fraud schemes.
