For about two years, employees at Evraz North America Inc., a Russian-owned steel plant operator in the US, falsified quality control test results on some armored plating for the vehicle’s manufacturer.

Bloomberg, citing an internal company report, states that the incidents took place at the Evraz plant in Oregon between 2017 and 2019.

The investigation found that employees at the Portland facility skipped mandatory hardness tests and falsified results for around 12,800 armored plates of various types. Some of these plates later exhibited signs of cracking.

The main customer for the armor plates was Oshkosh Defense LLC, which produces a wide range of military vehicles, including the JLTV (Joint Light Tactical Vehicle).

These vehicles are extensively used by the U.S. military and are also supplied to countries such as Israel, Romania, and Lithuania. By last year, the company had produced over 22,000 of these vehicles.

It remains unclear how many defective armor plates may have been used in JLTVs or other vehicles.

Following the release of the internal report, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted inspections at several Evraz facilities in the U.S. and issued a subpoena, instructing the company to preserve all production-related documentation.

Despite this, Evraz stated that its products had passed independent government tests and that the company had not received any complaints from customers.

Meanwhile, internal documents reveal that the company initiated an internal investigation at the end of 2019 in response to allegations of violations of quality control procedures.

According to a report dated December 10, 2019, titled “Quality Check of Portland Armor Plates,” since November 2017, employees at the plant had consistently bypassed the use of specialized equipment to measure the hardness of the armor plates, instead manually entering falsified results to expedite the testing process.

A company representative identified the untested plates as components for Oshkosh Defense’s JLTV and FMTV vehicles.

After the management learned of the possible production irregularities, Evraz temporarily suspended deliveries. At the same time, Oshkosh Defense, at least at the initial stage of the investigation, was not fully informed of the violations.

Despite Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and sanctions against Evraz Plc, Evraz North America continues to operate its plants in Portland and Pueblo.