Sanctions cut the bank. Turkish subcontractors at Akkuyu wait months for pay.
Russia's $20 billion Akkuyu nuclear plant in Mersin runs on Gazprombank money. After Washington sanctioned that bank, the on-site prime contractor TSM Enerji stopped wiring payments down the chain. The headcount on site fell from 12,000 to 3,000 in eight weeks, and a July 2025 internal document acknowledged $58 million owed to Turkey's payroll-tax authority. Turkish subcontractors below TSM carry three to six months of unpaid invoices on books that no one will factor.
01The pain
Two months without pay, then three. That is what relatives told the independent outlet Sota in July 2025: workers at Russia's $20 billion Akkuyu nuclear plant in Mersin had not been paid since May. The headcount on site fell from 12,000 to 3,000 in eight weeks.1 Hundreds walked off in March and again in July; the gendarmerie answered with water cannons.3
The cash hole sits one layer above the workers. The prime contractor on Unit 1 is TSM Enerji İnşaat Sanayi, a Turkey-registered firm wholly owned by Russia's Titan-2 group.5 Rosatom routes its overseas nuclear payments through Gazprombank. Once Washington sanctioned that bank, TSM's funding line went still.2 By July a TSM internal document acknowledged $58 million owed to Turkey's Social Security Institution (SGK, the state payroll-tax authority); asset seizure was on the table.3
Turkish subcontractors below TSM carry three to six months of unpaid invoices on books they cannot factor: formwork crews, electrical contractors, equipment-leasing yards, food caterers, transport firms.4 June 2025's General License 115B and November's General License 132 (waivers from the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control covering civil-nuclear payments) opened some forward routes; but GL 115B expired on 19 December 2025 and the back-arrears are uncovered.2 The classic squeeze: keep working on promises, walk off and lose the receivable, or sue a parent that sanctions have locked.
Further reading
- 1 The Moscow Times — Russian workers at Turkish nuclear plant report months of unpaid wages, 14 July 2025: payment delays since May, on-site headcount down from 12,000 to 3,000, March 2025 Turkish-worker strike over inflation-lagged wages, and Bloomberg's earlier reporting on Russia routing roughly $9 billion through Gazprombank as the project loan: themoscowtimes.com
- 2 Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), Warsaw — Hungarian-Russian Paks nuclear project: a new breach in Western sanctions, 14 July 2025: full text of the OFAC General License 115B regime, twelve covered Russian financial entities, the 19 December 2025 expiry, the prior 18 December 2024 / 10 January 2025 versions that prohibited Russian banks from processing Paks-II-style nuclear payments, and the 29 June 2025 lifting of restrictions on Gazprombank for civil-nuclear transactions launched before 21 November 2024: osw.waw.pl
- 3 Bianet — Akkuyu nuclear plant workers face harsh gendarmerie response during wage protest, July 2025: gendarmerie water-cannon response, the Dev Yapı-İş (DİSK) trade-union statement quoted in full, the workforce composition (Turkish + Russian nationals working under TSM Enerji), the Sota News reporting on TSM's recruitment chain via Titan-2, and the verbatim summary of the 22 July 2025 TSM internal document acknowledging $58 million in unpaid contributions to Turkey's Social Security Institution (SGK) with asset seizure on the table: bianet.org
- 4 Nuclear Engineering International — Akkuyu nuclear plant workers stop work in pay dispute, July 2025: subcontractor (Prometey Construction) workforce protest, three months of unpaid wages, the Patronların Ensesindeyiz support statement on poor working conditions and prior poisoning incidents, and Akkuyu Nukleer Director General Anastasia Zoteeva's Atomexpo-2024 figure of $5 billion in contracts signed with local Turkish contractors out of a $6.5 billion total localisation potential, with about 400 firms involved (roughly half Turkish): neimagazine.com
- 5 Enerjiweb — TSM Enerji disputes at Akkuyu NGS continue: full text of the IC İçtaş public statement establishing TSM's ownership chain (TSM is "directly and indirectly 100% owned by Russia's TITAN-2 through subsidiaries", with its centre in Russia notwithstanding the Turkey-registered legal personality) and the legal status of the contract substitution by Akkuyu Nükleer A.Ş. that placed TSM as the sole prime contractor on Unit 1: enerjiweb.com
- 6 The Moscow Times — Rosatom blames "unfriendly countries" for delayed wages at Turkish nuclear plant, 24 July 2025: Rosatom press-office statement to RBC blaming "external political factors" and "unfair competition" for the financing block, the company's instruction to contractors to hold meetings with employees, and the local subsidiary Akkuyu Nuclear's confirmation it is "implementing all measures within its authority" to resolve the issue: themoscowtimes.com
02Who solves this today
Four established Turkish factoring desks publicly market the closest published products to the Akkuyu subcontractor's cash-flow problem (domestic invoice discounting, supplier financing, public-receivables assignment), plus one global trade-credit insurer with Turkish operations listed as honest adjacency. None today markets a productised Akkuyu-subcontractor receivables-factoring service routed through a US Treasury–licensed nuclear-payment channel — that absence is the wedge. Each entry was checked live on the date of writing.
Listed providers publicly market to the Turkish factoring, supplier-finance, export-credit and trade-credit-insurance niches on their own homepage or service pages. Inclusion is not endorsement. Probed and dropped (verbatim audit log so the editorial reasoning is auditable): Garanti BBVA Faktoring's www subdomain returned a DNS resolution failure on probe; QNB Finansfaktoring returned a TLS hostname-mismatch error on both www and bare hostname probes — both excluded under the live-check rule until their published surfaces resolve. Fiba Faktoring returned a TLS hostname-mismatch error and was dropped. Cofidis Faktoring's published Turkish domain returned a DNS resolution failure and was dropped. The Association of Financial Institutions (Finansal Kurumlar Birliği) and the Turkish Treasury are referenced as sector regulators rather than listed as solution providers. Akkuyu Nükleer A.Ş., Rosatom, TSM Enerji İnşaat Sanayi, Titan-2 and IC İçtaş are referenced in section 01 as the contracting parties whose dispute creates the pain rather than as solution providers; the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control is the licensing authority for any compliant payment route and is referenced as such. The Moscow Times, Bianet, Nuclear Engineering International, OSW (Centre for Eastern Studies, Warsaw) and Enerjiweb are referenced as media citations rather than listed as solution providers.
Operators discussing this
These are real Turkish operators talking about this pain in their own words. They are the reason this page exists.
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«muhtemelen ihaleyi alan firma taşerona verimiştir.»
"Most likely the firm that won the tender handed the work down to subcontractors."
akkuyu nükleer santralinde işçi eylemi · Ekşi Sözlük — Thread opened 23 July 2025; multiple distinct posters (megafon bozuldu, bir zamanlar cok mutluyduk, others) discussing the subcontractor cascade on the same day, with further entries in the days following.
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«akkuyu nükleer güç santrali inşaatında çalışan işçiler, çalışma koşulları ve aylardır ödenmeyen maaşları için eylem yaptı»
"Workers on the Akkuyu nuclear power plant construction took action over working conditions and wages unpaid for months."
akkuyu nükleer enerji santrali · Ekşi Sözlük — Main Akkuyu thread spans 134 pages across multiple years; recurring re-entries during each wage-arrears flare-up (2024 strikes, March 2025, July 2025) — multi-year arc evidence of the pain pattern.
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