Finnish electronics retailer mixed up in selling drones to Russia, partners cutting ties

[Outraider]

Summary

Finnish electronic retailer Jimm's PC Store was accused of knowingly selling drones to Russia via third parties, Luminor and Siberica, operating in Finland. These sales happened during 2021-2022. This has caused several of their partners to sever ties. Jimm's has sites "selling frenzy" for clouding their judgement. Luminor and Siberica were placed under USA sactions on september 2023 and EU sanctions on December 2023. Investications by Finnish customs reveal Jimms selling "notable amount" of goods to Russia via Luminor over 2021-2022 and after the Russian invasion of Unkraine, Luminor informent they are exporting their goods to Turkiye while notably increasing their purchaces. Jimm's has confirmed these sale amount and sums, saying they succumbed to "sale frenzy" and were a little too gullible. So far Finnish ESprots teams ENCE and havu gaming and electronic news site io-tech.fi have ended partnerships.

Quotes

Quote

Olemme kuitenkin sortuneet myyntihuumaan emmekä ole tajunneet tehdä riittäviä taustatarkistuksia. Meillä on tuhansia suomalaisia yritysasiakkaita eikä heidän taustojaan ole tuolloin kyetty tarkistamaan kuin pintapuolisesti. Kyseisenä ajankohtana keväällä 2022 kyseisen yrityksen julkiset tiedot näyttivät normaalilta, Nietula kirjoittaa.

We have succumbed to sale frenzy and we haven't figured to do sufficient background checks. We have thousands of finnish corporate clients and none of their backgrounds could be verified more than superficially. At the time of spring 2022, the public information for the company in question were normal. Nietula writes.

 

My thoughts

 This is a developing story and we might see more partners leaving Jimm's who is well known by Finnish gamers and is partnered with many Finnish E-Sports teams, Finnish Esports League (https://fel.gg/) and LAN parties such as Assembly (https://assembly.org/en). Jimms' revue for 2021 was 70.6mil euros and these sales are reportedly around 2mil euros so barely a 3% bump for ruining their reputation. Jimm's was acquired by Caseking GmbH with ownership shenanigans of its own and jimms hasn't revealed their true owners by the time of this article so there could be some further clandestine shenanigans around this story.

 

Sources

iltalehti.fi and io-tech.fi sources in Finnish, sorry

https://www.iltalehti.fi/talous/a/0e14dd1a-f303-4f02-9caf-d7bc05cf4fc5

https://www.iltalehti.fi/talous/a/613a42e3-37e0-4d99-9a38-010543a6ac97

 https://www.io-tech.fi/uutinen/jimms-pc-store-myi-valtavan-maaran-drooneja-epaillaan-paatyneen-venajalle-myyntihuuma-iski/

 

[TempestCatto]

Sounds like their days of doing business are "Finnished"

[Techstorm970]

10 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Sounds like their days of doing business are "Finnished"

[LogicalDrm]

To me this sounds and looks like overreaction. There are Finnish companies which are still knowingly operating in Russia. Here there was middleman and Jimms doesn't seem like knowingly doing anything (which would mean knowing and accepting what middleman is doing and knowingly aiding in such actions, the difference is big if you stop to think about it). With exception of not checking further on the middlemen who were exporting to Russia before the war and continued exports after conflict began. From those sources, I don't even see mention about them being investigated or accused about wrongful actions. The middleman got not guilty verdict on export charges from lower court. 

 

Though I get that one would take another result. The wording, especially on io-tech article, makes it sound like its worse. Customs did investigate things and Jimms being the retailer, they were part of, but not main focus on, the investigation. There's also mention about "suspicion on drones ending in Russia", but thats from US putting the two main suspects on ban list. No proof, no direct investigations, no convictions. So other than admitting being scammed, not so bad. 

[Outraider]

I mainly put this up here for the "partners cutting ties" reason since Jimm's is so visible in Finnish esports scene so this might have ripple effects around here when they aren't throwing sponsormoney around.

[Thaldor]

"Pretty visible". Basicly Jimm's is the only store in Finland selling certain things like pretty much everything more niche in PC building. Tells a lot when you go to Verkkokauppa.com, the second big PC component seller in Finland, and for them "watercooling" means only AIOs. You need custom watercooling stuff, it's either Jimm's, internet or back to the good old days of junkyards and aquarium stores.

Just to add to the situation before someone comments "just buy from Amazon". We don't have Amazon or eBay, we must use German Amazon and eBay. Amazon Prime in Finland is pretty much only the streaming service, no next day deliveries or anything. Wanna order from Caseking? That would be shipping costs starting at 14,99€.

 

There used to be more PC stores in Finland but like almost closer to 15 years ago certain PC store brand (Tietoasema) aggressively underpriced everything and spread like a cancer only to drive pretty much everyone else except Jimm's (which survived only by being as niche store as it is) out and then one day just folded like a wet card house leaving a huge vacuum that was filled pretty much only by Jimm's. There's some PC stores but pretty much all of them are more or less just selling components as a secondary business and primary thing being selling laptops and serving business customers.

[williamcll]

Sucks to be them when Russians also buy drones from other countries with centuries old beef with the russians like the polish.

[SansVarnic]

-= Moved to General Discussion =-

Tech news typically requires the news to be about tech.

[LogicalDrm]

An update to this has been several Youtubers and other organizations cutting sponsorships. Which is fine, I guess. But some of them are doing it in a way which is hypocritical imo. As the sponsorships have been both money and free hardware, not acknowledging that the equipment has been received for free during the time when this was active, or maybe even after investigation was finished and public. So these people have been enjoying same benefits as with sponsorship while pretending to be holy. 

 

I don't mind cutting ties, thats each own decision and I hope they have thought it through. But I find it morally odd to not acknowledge that there was/has been sponsorship and some equipment are from that. They could ofc pay up what is owed, but these people are as greedy as they are now accusing Jimms to be. So not likely.

[Thaldor]

2 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

An update to this has been several Youtubers and other organizations cutting sponsorships. Which is fine, I guess. But some of them are doing it in a way which is hypocritical imo. As the sponsorships have been both money and free hardware, not acknowledging that the equipment has been received for free during the time when this was active, or maybe even after investigation was finished and public. So these people have been enjoying same benefits as with sponsorship while pretending to be holy. 

 

I don't mind cutting ties, thats each own decision and I hope they have thought it through. But I find it morally odd to not acknowledge that there was/has been sponsorship and some equipment are from that. They could ofc pay up what is owed, but these people are as greedy as they are now accusing Jimms to be. So not likely.

That is generally problem with anything like this. A lot of people are noisy and rising to the barricades and at the same time do the most hypocritical things possible because convenience.

 

Personally I love it when there's news about some factory getting caught using child labor or something else and people start almost screaming how bad it is and how they will never support companies that manufactured anything in that factory... And then they order shit from Chinese dropshit stores, because "so cheap", and whole thing is either way forgotten when the new shiny miracle windchime is released.

 

Assembly has dropped Jimm's from the official sponsors but I am 75% sure if the Assembly Summer 2024 has gaming competitions or loaner machines, they all are from Jimm's because pretty much unless some stores do huge upgrades in their resources and manning, there's either PCs from Jimm's or some pre-builds. And week-couple later when those come to sale, they will sell like hot potatoes as always because they go really cheap and are "okay" gaming machines. I don't think people even remember this whole thing when that time comes, no matter how much they now bluster in the social media.

At least YouTubers will be back in the sponsor rings after the smoke clears, there's probably couple who have the balls not to return but most of them don't give a shit about anything else than doing the business.

 

I remember there having been something like this back when caseking bought Jimm's, in smaller scale but still, and it really came to nothing. I remember when the Verkkokauppa.com opened their store in Raisio and the security side was bought by some Easterneuropean/Russian flipping tourists who curved past the line in a bus and were let in because "they had brought a paper with names a day before", that was juicy shit in social media especially when that bus full of people basicly cleaned the store from opening discounts, people were going to boycott Verkkokauppa and what came from that? Absolutely nothing. Even in world scale, workers were jumping from the roof of the Foxconn factory, people got angry and were going to boycott Apple for using a factory with such working environment, couple months past and people are back to staining their panties over the new iPhones made in that exact Foxconn factory (later they installed the anti-suicide nets but that was like couple years later).