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The key German company, Riol Chemie GmbH, had made more than 30 shipments of chemicals and laboratory equipment to Russia's Chimmed Group, a wholesaler, over the past 3.5 years without the necessary export permits, according to an investigation by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and its media partners published on Aug. 30. Russian procurement records acquired by OCCRP, the Chimmed Group was contracted by the Russian intelligence agency FSB Criminalistics Institute in 2016 and it is accused of attempting to use Novichok poison to kill the now-imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020.