Western politicians are openly discussing financial assistance from frozen Russian assets. However, there is no legal basis for this yet. So the idea arose to force Russian moneybags to make voluntary contributions.
And as a thank you, free them from sanctions. Apparently, many Russian oligarchs may find such a deal profitable. After all, they have already managed to take out of Russia such wealth that is enough for 10 lives.
Cranking up such a scheme was proposed by the head of the Canadian Ministry of Finance, Chrystia Freeland. She could have personally known some Russians from the Forbes list for a long time – since she worked in the Moscow office of the Financial Times newspaper back in the 90s. At the same time, as it became known from the Western press, Freeland first discussed the idea with the Russian oligarchs themselves, and then voiced it at a meeting of representatives of the G7 countries.
However, where exactly the initiative came from, one can assume. In Canada, the property of Russian oligarchs – like a cat cried. Therefore, it is hard to believe that Freeland is guided in this matter solely by his official duties. It is possible that just one of the oligarchs used the former journalist as a negotiator. After all, the deal promises to be mutually beneficial.
The initial impulse of Western officials select for Russians, everything and spend at their own discretion has not received practical implementation for obvious reasons. Such a precedent will clearly scare off investors from Asia and the Middle East. So far, Washington is playing out the toughest scenario: a law has already been passed here that allows you to send the frozen assets of Russian oligarchs. But even there legal difficulties are expected. You will have to prove that the assets (we are talking about objects worth more than $2 million) were obtained through corruption thanks to the support of the Russian authorities. It is not surprising that so far there is no stream of news from the States about the actual freezing of the wealth of Russian oligarchs. On the contrary, the information comes just the opposite. It is known, for example, that for some reason Washington “forgave” Alisher Usmanov – he issued a special license to circumvent sanctions. Also missed perhaps the most famous Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich is on the sanctions list (the American press wrote that President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky asked for him).
In Europe, the “female catch” is much more solid. From the beginning of April, different countries began vying to report on the arrests of yachts and estates. However, in May the process seemed to stall. In addition, if in early April the frozen property was estimated at 30 billion euros, then at the end of May it was already at 10. Where did the difference go? Was it initially assessed incorrectly, or was it quietly defrosted? If so, for what merit? Significant news came in mid-March – the London police expelled protesters from Oleg Deripaska’s mansion who seized an elite living space. And here’s what is remarkable: at first, the press called the invaders Ukrainian activists, and then they began to call them anarchists. The accents are slowly shifting.
Meanwhile, the oligarchs who have fallen under the sanctions are increasingly able to successfully save their property. A recent example is the story of the Pacific yacht, the head of the NOVATEK gas company, Leonid Mikhelson. He ranks 4th on the Russian Forbes list and is under sanctions from Canada and Britain. In early May, an 85-meter vessel, having passed the Panama Canal, turned off transponders in the Caribbean Sea, ceasing to report its coordinates to the international system of maritime geolocation. It might seem that the ship is preparing to make a semicircle of the world in order to get into to Vladivostok following the example of Alexei Mordashov’s Nord yacht. But no: after a few days, Pacific marked itself off the Caribbean, indicating that it was going to Barcelona, and then to Egypt. Thus, the Pacific passed unimpeded not only through British-controlled Gibraltar, but also through the entire Mediterranean Sea.
What made the European authorities slow down the confiscation of the property of the oligarchs? Perhaps behind-the-scenes negotiations, or maybe quite open trials. It is no secret that Russians are massively filing lawsuits in courts over illegal inclusion in the sanctions lists. It is already known about the lawsuits of Dmitry Mazepin, Vadim Moshkovich, Igor Kesaev, Alexander Pumpyansky, Andrey Melnichenko, Alisher Usmanov, Alexei Mordashov, Petr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, Viktor Rashnikov … Something has been taken away from each of them or threatened to be taken away. And in many cases, the legal grounds for this are rather dubious. If the plaintiffs’ lawyers do a good job, European officials will either have to admit that they are arbitrarily and lawless, or give up villas, yachts and accounts with apologies. It is clear that they would prefer the third option, which would save face. It is about him, it seems, that the head of the Canadian Ministry of Finance spoke. For oligarchs, a donation scheme is also more profitable than litigation. The mechanism for imposing sanctions is designed in such a way that getting into the sanctions list would have to be challenged in court again every year. So the opportunity to solve the problem once and for all would be very helpful. Russian citizens would be able not only to return their property, but also to enter the business again and start earning.
A natural question arises: how will Moscow react to such a deal? The answer is obvious – bad. But, apparently, it is much more important for some oligarchs to keep the assets brought to the West than their business in Russia. A vivid example of this is Oleg Tinkov, who from Spain began to actively criticize the Russian special operation, after which he was forced to urgently sell his bank shares to Vladimir Potanin. True, London has not lifted its sanctions against Oleg Tinkov. Europe does not believe the words – Europe needs contributions.
Suspicions of behind-the-scenes negotiations between Russian oligarchs and European officials do not arise out of nowhere. Obviously, the West does not have a single approach to all Russian billionaires who are on the sanctions list. Someone is clearly being favored.
Why did America withdraw Alisher Usmanov from sanctions? According to rumors, local IT people asked for it. It seems that he has already invested or promised to invest a lot of money in the industry. It is known from open sources that back in 2014, together with partners in the USM holding, Usmanov created an investment fund of $ 1 billion and directed these funds to large international IT companies. Among them, for example, is the American taxi aggregator Uber, which is now hastily trying to get rid of assets from Russia. The fund’s subsequent investments were not openly reported. But it is possible that Usmanov and his associates finance IT projects that are important for the US economy. In this regard, it is important to say that Usmanov also actively invested in Russian high-tech companies. Yes, in 2021, USM Holding sold large stakes in the Russian Internet giants VKontakte and Mail.ru. However, at the beginning of this year, it became known about the control of Usmanov’s structures over the Forpost group of companies. It includes eight IT companies engaged in, among other things, system integration, information security and digital transformation of large enterprises. In this regard, one more fact is noteworthy: Western sanctions are hitting hard on the most diverse sectors of the Russian economy, from metallurgy to medicine. But the IT sector is somehow bypassed. Perhaps the secret is that the IT world is too globalized, it is not easy to wrest Russian companies and Russian investors out of it. Although there is a more conspiratorial version – they say, the Americans, through the supply of high-tech equipment with “backdoors”, can secretly conduct surveillance.
Another example of a cat-and-mouse game between Western officials and Russian billionaires is the story of the fertilizer manufacturer EuroChem and the SUEK coal holding. Their main beneficiary, Andrei Melnichenko, was on the sanctions list. However, the companies immediately declared that the former owner now has nothing to do with them. It turned out that the day before the announcement of sanctions, Andrey Melnichenko transferred his shares to his wife (was there any leaks from European structures here?). Alexandra Melnichenko, a former fashion model of Serbian origin, who was born in Belgrade in 1977, now owns a huge business empire in Russia. And there are no sanctions against it. The reason why the Melnichenkos happily managed to avoid a business freeze is not hard to imagine: Europe really needs EuroChem’s fertilizers.
But over the former beneficiary of Alfa-Bank, Peter Aven, who fled to London, clouds are gathering. At first, he, like many Russian oligarchs, fell under sanctions, but then he also became a defendant in a criminal case. He was initiated after a search in the luxurious house of an ex-Russian, where they found almost 30 thousand pounds in cash. The police took the money. In addition, they are investigating the transfer of Aven’s money to a property management company, which was made contrary to sanctions. But even after being persecuted, the co-author of Russian privatization (Pyotr Aven worked in Yegor Gaidar’s government together with Anatoly Chubais) is not going to leave London.
Alfa partner Mikhail Fridman, No. 6 on the Russian Forbes list with a fortune of $11.8 billion, faced similar difficulties. He recently complained to reporters that he lacked the money limits allocated by the authorities for living in London, where he settled since 2015. Now Fridman and Aven are trying to get out of the sanctions through the courts. It seems that they do not have trump cards in their hands for undercover games, as, perhaps, the same Melnichenko. However, donations to Ukraine could be a sure way to get an indulgence. Would the bankers go for such a deal, given the chance?
The money of the Russian oligarchs is all the more interesting to Western politicians, the more complicated the question of the reserves of the Russian Central Bank looks. The New York Times reported that the Biden administration is reluctant to spend Russian money. “Withdrawal of these funds may be illegal and prevent other countries from relying on the United States as a country to hold investments,” US officials were quoted as saying. At the same time, Washington leaked information to the press that only a small part of the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is on accounts in the United States, and the main funds are frozen in the Swiss Bank for International Settlements.