Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) reported on Feb. 23 that property and assets belonging to Oksana Marchenko, the wife of disgraced pro-Russian lawmaker Viktor Medvechuk, were seized. The total value of the assets is Hr 5.6 billion ($152 million).
This includes 14% of shares in two regional energy companies and more than 4% in a third which Marchenko owned through five offshore companies. Marchenko's assets in 18 investment, agro-industrial, telecommunications and other enterprises were also seized.
Furthermore, two plots of land, four residential buildings in Kyiv and Crimea, and 10 cars belonging to the defendant were formally seized.
The case of Marchenko, whose husband Viktor Medvedchuk was charged with treason and later handed over to Russia in a prisoner exchange in September 2022, is part of a greater issue with restricting Russian financial influence over Ukraine.
On Feb. 7, the SBU announced that they had dismantled a vast underground financing scheme worth over $1.3 million that involved companies linked to Marchenko. The scheme involved financing the Russian National Guard and Interior Ministry in occupied Crimea.
On Feb. 22, President Volodymyr Zelensky sent a draft law to parliament on Feb. 22, which is set to approve the National Security and Defense Council's decision to impose sanctions on all Russian financial institutions.
The sanctions consist of 10 points, including the suspension of the movement of assets belonging to Russian financial institutions, a ban on establishing business relations and correspondence, and a prohibition on entering into agreements and making investments in favor of such institutions.
