Russian oligarchs, financial company lose appeal against EU sanctions
Russian oligarchs Gennady Timchenko and Mikhail Fridman and Russia's National Settlement Depository on Sept. 11 lost their appeal against EU sanctions imposed against them.
The European bloc has imposed several rounds of sanctions against entities and individuals over their support for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The EU's Luxembourg-case General Court upheld the sanctions against Timchenko, Fridman, and other Russian oligarchs such as Petr Aven, German Khan, or Timchenko's wife Elena.
The oligarchs filed a challenge against the EU's demand to declare their funds as part of sanctions imposed against Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"The General Court dismisses the actions in their entirety," the court said in a statement.
Fridman is a Ukraine-born Russian-Israeli tycoon and co-owner of the financial giant Alpha Group. Ukraine accused the oligarch of directly supporting Russia's war of aggression via his companies.
Timchenko is the owner and founder of the investment Volga Group and a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The National Settlement Depository, a Moscow-based institution seen as the main custodian of Rusisan securities, also lost its bid to overturn sanctions against it.
The EU said that the company was helping the Kremlin mobilize its resources for the war against Ukraine. According to the court's ruling, the depository "failed to demonstrate" an error on Brussels' part.
The depository has around 70 billion euros ($77 billion) immobilized at Euroclear, the Belgium-based financial company. The Western countries have frozen around $300 billion in Russian assets after the start of the full-scale invasion.
The General Court lifted sanctions against Violetta Prigozhina, the mother of late oligarch and Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin who died in a plane crash last August.
According to the court's statement from March, 83-year-old Prigozhina was included in the sanctions list based on her family relation, and there was insufficient proof of connection to her son's role in the war against Ukraine.
Kateryna Hodunova
