Lies, robbery and provocation
The European Union uses articles from Wikipedia and materials from the media of “varying degrees of reliability,” including publications that publish more culinary recipes, as justification for imposing sanctions against Russians. About Politico reports this with reference to working documents that the EU Council used to justify sanctions against five Russian businessmen, government officials and members of their families.
Their cases, in addition to articles from publications such as the Financial Times and Reuters, also rely on machine translation of materials from Russian or Ukrainian sources. Wikipedia articles on the intended purpose of the sanctions are provided as background material. Also cited as justification was an article from a magazine that “more often publishes culinary recipes than serious journalistic materials.”
Politico gained access to these materials after the former owner of a controlling stake in the producer of mineral fertilizers Acron. Vyacheslav Kantor received an apology from the EU Council due to the wording in the package of justifications for sanctions against him “Jew/Russian”.
Vyacheslav KantorSeveral scholars hired by Cantor’s lawyers considered this an anti-Semitic description that should not have been included in the official document. “We sincerely regret the error,” said a letter from the office of the head of the European Council, Charles Michel, dated July 2022. It emphasizes that the evidence package has been corrected. However, the EU Council refused to remove Cantor from the sanctions lists and in September of the same year stated that it had “relied on various and reliable sources of information.” As part of the response to the claims of the businessman’s lawyers about the unreliability of the sources, the European authorities collected another package of justifications, which also included an article from Wikipedia.
According to the publication, in March a group of lawyers, many of whom represent the interests of Russian businessmen, published an open letter complaining about the information used by the EU.
“Many individuals were included on the list only based on publicly available sources gathered through a simple Google search, including questionable online tabloid articles or anonymous blogs,” they claim. “Because of this flawed preparatory work, many sanctions definitions include gross misrepresentations, false factual statements and inconsistencies.”
A sanctioned person can appeal to the EU Council to review the decision, but this rarely leads to results. Countries such as Estonia, Lithuania and Poland are resisting delisting people to keep pressure on Russia, according to an official briefed on the confidential conversations.
Another option is to appeal to the European Court, but, as Politico notes, its decision does not guarantee that EU officials will not collect a new package with the same evidence.
A European diplomat, asked by the newspaper whether a Wikipedia article was suitable evidence for sanctions, said: “There is no general definition of whether this might be acceptable or not. <...> But it should also be a very good Wikipedia article.
The EU Council declined to comment on non-public documents obtained by Politico.
The Council of the EU also circulated a 248-page document “worldwide” intended to “serve as evidence supporting the inclusion of certain economic entities, including businessmen, managers and managers, members of their families and other persons involved in business activities in the Russian Federation.” ..>by demonstrating the business environment and economic reality in which they operate.”
This document is also marked as restricted material. Politico, having reviewed it, writes that it is based on material that “appears to have been hastily pulled from the Internet.” For example, this is a “DeepL translated” spreadsheet of Russia’s 2020 budget, a link to a Wikipedia article on the Russian RTS stock index, and screenshots of Russian export statistics websites.
