The judge’s ruling, published on July 18, brings the account limits in line with the decision of the British sanctions regulator OFSI, which allowed Aven to use them to pay for “basic expenses”. It follows from the materials that due to the freezing of accounts after the imposition of sanctions on March 15, Aven’s basic needs were paid by his wife.
The billionaire’s monthly expenses are estimated at £140,000 ($167,840), writes Bloomberg. Most of this money is intended to protect and insure Aven’s art collection, an informed source told the agency. The value of the collection that is stored in Avena estate near London, is estimated at £300 million ($356 million).
Aven based in England got sanctioned UK on March 15, after which his bank accounts and assets, including real estate, were frozen. AT Financial Times interview the billionaire noted that he did not understand how to pay expenses now.
Later, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) secured in court the freezing of two bank accounts for £1.5 million ($1.8 million), which, according to its version, Aven could use. During an investigation into a possible violation of sanctions by the Russian billionaire NCA searched in his house. As part of its audit, the NCA found funds worth more than £3 million ($3.56 million) that were transferred to the UK from Austria in the hours before sanctions were imposed on March 15, writes Bloomberg.
Aven’s lawyers, during court hearings in London, sought to unfreeze accounts in the NCA lawsuit. Hugo Keith, a lawyer for the billionaire, denied allegations of sanctions violations against the billionaire during the hearing and urged the court to either reverse the freezing orders or change them. NCA lawyers insisted the accounts should remain frozen to allow time for “difficult investigations” both in the UK and elsewhere.
Aven himself had previously declined to comment on the NCA investigation for Forbes. The businessman does not see a threat to himself in the actions of the British authorities, said a Forbes source close to the billionaire.
IA “RBC”, 07/19/2022, “Alfa Group denied that Fridman and Aven received citizenship of Ukraine”: Businessmen Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven did not receive Ukrainian citizenship and did not apply for it, messages about this that appeared on the Web are fake, a representative of Alfa Group told RBC.
“Representatives of Alfa Group are considering the possibility of applying to law enforcement agencies with a request to open a criminal case on the fact of slander,” he added, commenting on the relevant publications in Telegram channels.
The fact that Fridman and Aven “received Ukrainian citizenship”, July 19 wrote the channel “Image of the Future”. Its authors claimed that the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky signed a closed decree the night before and now entrepreneurs must restructure the entire business and re-register it in Ukraine. […]
At the time of the start of the military operation in Ukraine, Aven also had Latvian citizenship in addition to Russian. The authorities of this country after the sanctions declared seeking to revoke his citizenship. Friedman is a citizen of Russia and Israel, and he was born in Lvov. — Inset K.ru
To understand who can fall under EU sanctions after February 24, you need to open Article 3 EU Regulation No. 269 2014 years in revision to date. To date, this article lists seven criteria that, if met, may place a person on the EU sanctions list. In terms of large Russian businessmen, we are interested in the criterion from paragraph 7: “leading entrepreneurs or legal entities, organizations or bodies present in sectors of the economy that provide a significant source of income to the government of the Russian Federation, which is responsible for the annexation of Crimea and the destabilization of Ukraine.” Under this criterion, Brussels decided to include the majority of major Russian businessmen and their relatives. In fact, a presumption was created: since you are a major Russian businessman, it means that you are connected with the Russian authorities. However, such a decision was very premature.
In December 2018, the Court of Appeal of the EU Court lifted sanctions with ex-premier of Ukraine Mykola Azarov. And at the same time, it raised the bar for the administration of sanctions and pointed out the additional obligations of the EU authorities when including or extending sanctions for another period. Since March 3, 2014, the EU has supported personal sanctions against members of the government Viktor Yanukovych on the basis of a one-page document of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, which contained a list of persons against whom a criminal case on embezzlement of state property and assets was allegedly initiated and is being investigated. However, the EU Court considered this state of affairs to be contrary to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: the Council of the EU is obliged to check with its own hands whether such persecution actually continues and whether the procedural deadlines for it have expired? In this case, the court considered that such an investigation could not last forever, and the Council of the EU became obliged to check, when extending sanctions for another year, whether the actual situation of the person involved in the list corresponds to the primary grounds for his inclusion in the list. If the primary grounds have disappeared or a third state is simply abusing its requests to the EU to fight sanctions against people it doesn’t like, they need to be removed.
Hard choice
By creating a presumption of support for the Russian authorities by large businessmen, the EU institutions went against their own legislation, and with the inclusion of large businessmen in the sanctions list they got a little excited. Everyone who has not proven a personal contribution to the destabilization of the situation in Ukraine has a chance of leaving the list. For this, it is not necessary to wait for court decisions. The EU Council at its next meeting may vote to lift sanctions against a number of businessmen and their relatives. However, this requires the unanimous consent of all 27 Member States. Not all member states will give this consent, so the EU is in a dilemma: to prove its commitment to its own values now and get out of the situation with dignity, or to receive serious criticism from the EU Court of Justice about double standards and human rights violations at the time of ruling on Russian businessmen.
* According to the requirement of Roskomnadzor, when preparing materials on a special operation in eastern Ukraine, all Russian media are obliged to use information only from official sources of the Russian Federation. We cannot publish materials in which the ongoing operation is called an “attack”, “invasion” or “declaration of war”, unless it is a direct quote (Article 57 of the Federal Law on the Media). In case of violation of the requirement, the media may be fined 5 million rubles, and the publication may also be blocked.