The United States and Britain on Thursday added new names of oligarchs close to the Kremlin to their blacklists, a move aimed at increasing pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the brutal war in the Ukraine, while some Russian millionaires begin to distance themselves from him.
US President Joe Biden accused the oligarchs of “filling their pockets with Russian money while Ukrainians hide in the subway to escape indiscriminate missile launches.” It is about maintaining the “strongest and most united economic pressure campaign in history” on Russia, he said.
Washington and London sanctioned members of the Russian elite who had already been added to the list by the European Union on Monday, in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Who are the Russian millionaires?
Oligarchs, or extremely wealthy business leaders who are politically connected, became more prominent in Russia in the 1990s, but they are not unique to Russia, he recalled. CBS News.
In the case of Russia’s elite class, the term oligarch may relate to people who used personal connections after the collapse of the Soviet Union to take over previously state-owned industries and benefit from Russia’s new capitalism, it reported. NBC News.
A 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research article showed that the estimated offshore assets of Russian elites were worth as much as the assets households of the entire Russian population.
Russian millionaires benefit from the regime
Many Russian oligarchs are heavily involved in and benefit from the Vladimir Putin regime, with some holding political office. CBS News exemplified: “When Putin opened a new bridge to Crimea in 2018, a region that Russia had annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the bridge was built by the company of his friend Arkady Rotenberg and the truck he drove was made by the Rostec state corporation of Sergei Chemezov. according to the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank that focuses on domestic and foreign policy.”
He also revealed that in the oligarchs there is a line of succession in politics: “Dmitry Patrushev, son of the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, was appointed Russia’s minister of agriculture, according to the Carnegie Moscow Center.”
CBS News reported that “numerous Russian oligarchs and government officials were sanctioned by the United States in 2018, in part for the regime’s occupation of Crimea and for continuing to instigate violence in Ukraine, according to the Treasury Department, which announced the sanctions. Rotenberg’s son and Patrushev were included in that round of sanctions for their involvement in the regime.”
Russian oligarchs sanctioned for war with Ukraine
Some of the sanctioned oligarchs include a former KGB leader, a diamond mining executive and a deputy prime minister.
The list that has been released goes beyond “normal business tycoons” sanctioned in the past, said William Courtney, deputy senior fellow at the nonpartisan Rand Corp., whose members include Russian and Western leaders, and who served as ambassador. in Kazakhstan, Georgia.
“These people are KGB cronies,” Courtney said. “They have more influence in politics, the kind of politics that led to the invasion of Ukraine,” he reported. NBC News.
Putin’s inner circle includes a number of people with military and secret service backgrounds who may be less inclined to distribute their wealth internationally, preferring instead to stay close to Putin in Russia, the outlet said.
Among others, those targeted by the sanctions are, he points out NBC: Sergei Sergeevich Ivanov, hijo de Sergei Borisovich Ivanov; Andrey Patrushev, hijo de Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev; Ivan Igorevich Sechin, hijo de Igor Ivanovich Sechin; Alexander Aleksandrovich Vedyakhin; Andrey Sergeyevich Puchkov; Yuri Alekseyevich Soloviev, y Galina Olegovna Ulyutina.
“Isolate Russia”
The sanctions seek to “isolate Russia from global markets and impose serious costs for this unwarranted act of war, by targeting the crimes of Russian officials, government-aligned elites and those who aid or conceal their illegal conduct (…) A those who support the Russian regime through corruption and sanctions evasion – we will deprive them of a safe haven and hold them accountable,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco of the Department of Justice said in a press release. “Oligarchs, be warned: We will use every tool to freeze and seize your criminal proceeds.”
The agency launched a new task force, called KleptoCapture, dedicated to investigating and prosecuting Russian officials and oligarchs who violate US sanctions.
That group is made up of experts in sanctions, money laundering, taxation and the fight against corruption, and can result in the seizure of yachts, private planes or luxury apartments owned by those around the Kremlin.
“War on the Banks”
Financier and anti-corruption advocate Bill Browder told the senior investigative correspondent for CBS NewsCatherine Herridge, that the goal is to get the oligarchs to put pressure on Putin to stop the war. “We’re not ready to engage in a military war, so there’s an expression that we should fight them in the banks if we can’t fight them with tanks,” Browder said.
Some wealthy Russians have spoken out against Putin’s attack on Ukraine. Mikhail Fridman, who founded one of Russia’s largest private banks, said he doesn’t think war should be a solution, the outlet noted.
Another Russian business tycoon, Oleg Deripaska, took to the messaging platform Telegram to share his statement. He is considered an ally of Putin, but wrote that “peace is very important” and that talks to end the war should begin “as soon as possible,” according to The Associated Press.
US Treasury Undersecretary Wally Adeyemo claimed on Thursday that the Biden administration would continue to target Russian elites as it applies sanctions against the country.
He assured that the elites are already “trying to get their money out of Russia, because the Russian economy is contracting.” “We are going to make it difficult for them to use the assets in the future,” Adeyemo warned during an event organized by The Washington Post. He added: “So our goal is to find that money, freeze it and confiscate it.”
The dispute over the yachts
Yachts owned by Russian oligarchs, who have bought some of the largest and most extravagant “superyachts” on the planet, are shining symbols of how Russia’s elite have profited under Vladimir Putin’s rule.
Now the yachts are becoming key targets of US and European allies, who promise to seize the properties of the oligarchs.
Meanwhile, disputes erupted: French officials seized a yacht Wednesday night they said was linked to Igor Sechin, a sanctioned Russian oil executive and close associate of Putin, as he prepared to flee a port. But the company that manages the ship denied that Sechin owned it. And the White House said that German officials had seized another oligarch’s yacht in Hamburg, while local authorities denied that boats had been seized, according to CNN.
In addition, the yacht of a well-known Russian oligarch with the so-called “golden passport”, which Malta granted him for investing in the country, docked this Friday in the port of Birgu, after the government suspended the granting of this type of document as a measure sanctions against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, local media denounced.
The gigantic 70-meter yacht of Russian billionaire Maxim Shubarev, chairman of the Setl Group, one of Russia’s largest financial and industrial associations, docked at the port of Birgu this Friday morning, the country’s two main newspapers reported. Malta Today and Times of Malta.
Neither Shubarev nor his company appear on the list of Russian oligarchs who have been sanctioned, but the media denounces that the government could be protecting the Russian tycoon, since in 2018 he bought a Maltese passport thanks to investments in the country, one of the ways to obtain this documentation that is being highly questioned by the European Union.
The Maltese-flagged yacht Polaris was purchased last summer and is worth 80 million euros, but it is unclear if Shubarev is on the ship, which arrived in Malta from Viareggio, Italy.
Last week, Deputy Minister for Citizenship Alex Muscat defended Malta’s citizenship-through-investment project, insisting it is not the controversial golden passports.
However, Robert Abela’s government bowed to international pressure on Wednesday and backed down, saying it would suspend the possibility of obtaining this type of document for both Russians and Belarusians, while it remains operational for applicants from other countries.
Biden: We’re Going For His Misbegotten Profits
President Joe Biden warned the Russian elite in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night: “To the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who bilked this violent regime out of billions of dollars: no more,” he declared. Biden: “We join with European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private planes. We go for their ill-begotten gains.”
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