On May 18, 2026, the Netherlands’ Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service (“FIOD”), which tracks down persons and entities that attempt to circumvent financial sanctions, announced the arrests of a 57-year-old man from Amsterdam and a 39-year-old man from The Hague suspected of making economic resources available to entities sanctioned by the European Union, in violation of the Sanctions Act of 1977. According to the FIOD, their investigation centered on an unnamed web hosting company founded in February 2022, just two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that had allegedly been used to facilitate destabilizing activities, including cyberattacks, interference, and the spread disinformation, in the European Union. The FIOD reported that, shortly after the company was sanctioned by the EU on May 20, 2025, a significant portion of its technical infrastructure was transferred to a newly established Dutch company (controlled by the suspect from Amsterdam), which the FIOD believes has acted as a front for the sanctioned entities. A second Dutch company (controlled by the suspect from The Hague) allegedly facilitated the scheme by connecting the new company’s servers to the internet. In addition to the arrests, investigators seized several items, including laptops, telephones and more than 800 servers, resulting from searches conducted at three businesses in Enschede and Almere and two data centers in Dronten and Schiphol-Rijk.