(Bloomberg) -- Occupying the top three floors of an unremarkable office building in northern Mumbai, there’s little to distinguish Shreya Life Sciences from the many other commercial businesses that keep the Andheri neighborhood of India’s largest metropolis humming throughout the day.
Most Read from Bloomberg
But this inconspicuous pharmaceutical company is part of a lucrative trade in leading-edge technology to Russia that has the US and its European allies worried at India’s burgeoning role as an intermediary in the sales.
A Bloomberg News analysis of data compiled by trade-tracking firms ImportGenius and NBD shows that Shreya exported 1,111 units of Dell Technologies Inc.’s most-advanced servers to Russia in April-August of this year.
The servers, known as PowerEdge XE9680, contain high-end processors optimized for artificial intelligence made by Nvidia Corp. or Advanced Micro Devices Inc., according to Dell’s website. Specification data available for 998 shipped servers show they were equipped with Nvidia’s H100 chips.
The servers — and the chips they contain — are on a list of items restricted by the US and the European Union “to target sensitive sectors in Russia’s military industrial complex.” Yet the shipments, worth $300 million and imported by two Russian trading companies, Main Chain Ltd. and I.S LLC, were just the latest in a series of advanced technology exports Shreya made perfectly legally to Russia since September 2022, the data showed.
Shreya did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and no one was available to do so during two visits to its office.
The findings underscore the holes in western government attempts to shut off Moscow’s access to dual-use technology with potential military applications, as well as the cutting-edge nature of the equipment being shipped. India is increasingly the intermediary of choice: It’s now the second-biggest supplier after China of restricted technology to Russia, Bloomberg reported Oct. 12.
Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, complained in a post on X that Russia is still receiving components used for electronic intelligence and warfare systems despite western sanctions. “No one should profit from the lives of Ukrainians,” he said Oct. 7.
While India is the point of transshipment, trade data suggest that Malaysia is in fact the origin. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim met with President Vladimir Putin in Russia in September, and hailed the “enormous potential” to enhance regional trade relations, including through advanced technologies.