A group of hackers known as PRANA Network claim to have hacked the email servers of the Iranian company Sahara Thunder linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which facilitates the illegal sale of weapons from Iran to Russia.

The hackers said they extracted nearly 10 GB of files from the company, including contracts detailing multi-million-dollar arms deals, evidence of payments made in gold bars, blueprints for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and details regarding an operative known as Generation Trading FZE based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a company called Alabuga. Furthermore, the leaked information included sensitive bank account details and factory layouts.

According to Ukrainian defense news portal Militarny which reviewed the leaked files, the documents on the localization of Iranian attack drone production in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, Russia, contained information about the negotiation process, which indicated the volume of production and the cost of drones.

The type of product being manufactured is not directly specified in the documents, Militarny said. Instead, drones are listed under a special code as “motor boat type Dolphin 632”.

According to the documents, Russia intended to make 6,000 Iranian drones on its facilities under license within two and a half years by 2022.

The initial price proposed by the Iranian side stood at 23 million rubles per unit ($375,000). However, following negotiations, a deal was struck at 12 million rubles per unit for an order totaling 6,000 units ($193 thousand dollars), or 18 million rubles ($290 thousand dollars) for an order of 2,000 units.

The overall contract price for production, inclusive of technology transfer, equipment, 6,000 sets of UAVs, and software, amounts to 108.5 billion rubles ($1.75 billion dollars).

As per the 2023 plans, with complete localization of production and minimal reliance on Iranian components, the projected cost of the Shahed-136 is anticipated to be 4.4 million rubles ($48.8 thousand dollars) per unit.

However, the selling price, representing the amount at which they will be transferred to the customer, is set at 14.9 million rubles ($165.5 thousand dollars), which can be explained by the included payments for licensed production, additional expenses, and investments in the enterprise.

Other documents revealed that Russia engages in some of its financial transactions and settlements with Iran using gold.

For instance, in February 2023, the company named “Alabuga Machinery” delivered 2,067,795 grams of gold bars to the Iranian intermediary company Sahara Thunder, presumably as payment for provided services and goods.