Tapas and Toxins

This version of the story is provided by OCCRP

Cavina Vinoteca, a slick wine bar in Barcelona’s fashionable Poblenou neighborhood, has drawn rave reviews online since it opened its doors last year.

The restaurant is one of several gastronomic ventures run by the Oleinikova family, led by matriarch Maria, who was born in Russia but is now a Spanish citizen. Together with her son and daughter, she also runs a Spanish company that exports wine, beer, cider and liqueurs to Russia.

But IStories, OCCRP, All Eyes On Wagner, Slidstvo.Info, and Belarusian Investigative Center have learned that this company did business beyond just beverages — it was also shipping chemicals to Russia in possible violation of European Union sanctions imposed following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Last year, Maria and her children Irina and Vyacheslav were arrested in a Spanish police raid dubbed “Operacion Probirka” — or “Operation Test Tube” — in which 13,000 kilograms of chemicals were seized at the Port of Barcelona.

Operation Test Tube was part of a Spanish investigation into the illegal supply of chemicals to Russia, Spain’s Interior Ministry said in a statement at the time, but since then the government has provided almost no details about the case. Although the statement referred to a Russian company that was importing the chemicals, police did not publicly name it or provide details of the shipments.

A Spanish police source involved in the investigation said authorities suspect Oleinikova was an “intermediary” who arranged the shipments. (The officer was authorized to speak to the press, but not to be identified by name.)

But drawing on Russian import data, reporters found that Oleinikova doesn’t just operate in Spain — she also majority-owns a Russian chemical company called Catrosa Reactiv that received at least 36 shipments of sanctioned chemicals from Spain between 2022 and 2024 — including one that came directly from Complexe Sancu, the Spanish wine-and-beer export company run by Oleinkova and her children.

How it worked

Most of the other shipments were made by a Spanish company called Scharlab S.L., which is headquartered in Barcelona with subsidiaries in Italy and the Philippines, import data shows. Scharlab is majority-owned by Werner Scharlau, a German living in Spain who was among those arrested in February.

On its website, Catrosa Reactiv — which was founded in 2006 and taken over by Oleinikova’s husband two years later — says that it “successfully operates in the Russian chemical reagents market” and supplies products to laboratories and raw materials to industry. The Russian company register shows that Oleinikova, who has a background in academic scientific research, became the company’s majority shareholder in 2015 and still holds a controlling stake in the firm.

Who were the clients

It is not known how the chemicals imported from Spain to Catrosa Reactiv were ultimately used. However, leaked transaction data obtained by reporters showed Catrosa Reactiv’s clients in Russia since 2022 have included at least six sanctioned entities linked to weapons production, the defense sector, and the Russian military.

They included the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, also known as GosNIIOKhT, which has been sanctioned by the EU and U.S. for its involvement in the development and production of chemical weapons including the toxic nerve agent Novichok, which has been used by Russian operatives for stealth assassinations abroad. 

Since 2022, Catrosa Reactiv has also received payments from: 

• The All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, an agency that developed weapons in the Soviet era, including the first Soviet atomic bomb, before shifting towards building and managing Russia’s most advanced supercomputers.
• The Scientific Research Institute of Applied Acoustics, which was sanctioned by the U.S. for allegedly “carrying out research and development of military products.” The U.S. also said it had been “involved in the procurement and inventory of chemicals that could be used in the production of chemical weapons agents.” 
• Explosives manufacturer SKTB Technolog, a contractor for the Russian Ministry of Defense
• The 18th Central Research Institute, known as Military Unit 11135, which is part of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.

What the shipments contained

Reporters did not identify any chemicals specifically associated with chemical weapons in Catrosa Reactiv’s import data. However, Miguel Ángel Sierra, a professor of organic chemistry at the Complutense University of Madrid and former member of the scientific advisory board of the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the chemicals it imported from Europe were sanctioned because they had multiple potential uses, including creating explosives.

“These have been banned by the European Union because they are industrial products,” he explained. “For example, there are many processes you can't carry out, including the preparation of explosives, the preparation of pharmaceuticals, and the preparation of many other things, without having some of these products.”

Official press releases following the October 2024 raid on the Barcelona port didn’t name the specific chemicals that were confiscated, but police told reporters they had seized 13,000 kilograms of the solvent N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), which is widely used in electronics, pharmaceuticals, and coating. Investigators also found smaller amounts of other chemicals that could be used in weapons production. 

Some shipments of chemicals — including nitric acid and acetone, both used in the manufacture of explosives, and diethylamine, a chemical involved in the manufacturing of the nerve agent VX — had already left Spain for Russia, police said.

In an effort to form a complete picture of the types of chemicals Catrosa Reactive had been importing from the EU, reporters reviewed Russian import records in a commercial database.

The 32 shipments Catrosa Reactiv received from Scharlab contained 14 chemicals worth $15,000, all subject to EU export bans from April 2022 to June 2023 due to their potential contribution to the enhancement of Russia’s defence, security, and industrial sectors. They included $8,200 worth of NMP, the same solvent discovered at the Barcelona port, plus $5,800 worth of isopropanol and $2,550 of hydrogen peroxide.

The shipment made to Catrosa Reactiv from Complexe Sancu, the Spanish wine export company run by Maria Oleinikova’s children, contained around $3,650 worth of sodium hydrogen carbonate — also known as sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda. But despite its benign uses, the chemical was prohibited for export from the EU to Russia in April 2022 under the category of “goods which could contribute to the enhancement of Russian industrial capacities.”

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Spain’s Audiencia Nacional — a court that deals with terrorism and major crimes — confirmed to reporters that Oleinikova and her two children are among nine suspects currently under investigation for “smuggling banned substances.” All nine suspects have been released while the investigation continues, and no one has been charged with a crime, the press department for the court said. 

Oleinikova declined to comment for this story because the case is still under investigation by the Audiencia Nacional.