The British digger maker JCB, owned by the billionaire Bamford family, continued to build and supply equipment for the Russian market months after saying it had stopped exports because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Guardian can reveal. Russian customs records show that JCB, whose owners are major donors to the Conservative party, continued to make new products available for Russian dealers well after 2 March 2022, when the company publicly stated that it had “voluntarily paused exports” to Russia. The data raises questions about the accuracy of JCB’s statements on its business in Russia and relationship with its biggest dealer there, Moscow-based Lonmadi, and that company’s former owner, UK-based JVM group. JCB has repeatedly said that it stopped exporting products to Russia and JVM companies after 2 March 2022 – less than a week after Putin sent troops into Ukraine. However, customs records collated by a trade data provider show the serial numbers of dozens of vehicles, worth millions of pounds, which appear to have been supplied to companies in Russia after that date. When the Guardian presented a sample of those records to the Staffordshire-based manufacturer, it admitted that JVM continued to collect diggers from JCB’s factories...