Dozens of used Leopard 1 tanks that once belonged to Belgium have been bought by another European country for Ukrainian forces, the arms dealer who made the deal said on Tuesday.

The German-made Leopards have been at the center of a public controversy at times since Belgian Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder said the government had investigated buying the tanks to send to Ukraine but had been given unreasonable prices.

The conflict highlighted the predicament Western governments face in finding arms for Ukraine after more than a year of intense fighting, as weapons they had dismissed as obsolete are now in high demand and often owned by private companies.

Freddy Versluys, managing director of defense company OIP Land Systems, bought the tanks from the Belgian government more than five years earlier.

He told Reuters that he has now sold all 50 tanks to another European government, which he could not name due to a confidentiality clause. However, he said he also cannot disclose the price.

German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Tuesday evening that arms manufacturer Rheinmetall had acquired the tanks and would prepare most of them for export to Ukraine.

The company declined to comment.

“The fact that they are leaving our company proves that we asked for a fair market price and someone was more than happy to take them,” Versluys said in a LinkedIn post, accompanied by an image of the tanks next to a bottle of Ukrainian vodka.

He also said the tanks are now being taken to a factory for substantial repair. Some of the tanks will be used for spare parts, while others will be repaired. He estimated it could take four to six months before they are on the battlefield in Ukraine.

A defense source told Reuters that the German government is paying to restore 32 Leopard 1 tanks and send them to Ukraine as part of a support package for Ukraine announced by Germany at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July.

The German defense ministry had no immediate comment.

Several of Kiev’s Western allies earlier agreed to send modern Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and also to send older Leopard 1 models.

The Leopard 1 was manufactured by the German company Krauss-Maffei starting in the 1960s. It is lighter than the Leopard 2 and has a different type of main gun. The models sold by Versluys were last upgraded in the 1990s.

A spokesman for the Belgian defense ministry declined to comment on the sale of the tanks.