UK targets crypto networks and shell companies helping Russia dodge sanctions
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The British government is introducing a new package of sanctions designed to target "backdoor Russian sanctions evasion" and "crypto and illicit finance networks exploited by Russia to circumvent UK sanctions", British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper announced May 26.
"The UK is adapting and strengthening our approach to target the evolving tactics Russia is using to evade restrictions. We are going after the infrastructure that underpins its war economy at the same time as Ukraine is increasing the pressure on Russia on the battlefield," Cooper said in a statement.
The British package includes 18 new sanctions designations, which "directly targets Russia’s illicit financial infrastructure used to move funds, procure goods, and sustain its war," the British government said in a statement.
A key target of the new sanctions package is the so-called A7 network, a "political and commercial enterprise aimed at enabling large-scale evasion of sanctions levelled against Russia," according to The Centre For Information Resilience, a British human rights and pro-democracy monitoring group.
The A7 network was created in 2024 and is led and majority owned by Israeli-Moldovan Ilan Shor, one of the masterminds behind the 2014 Moldovan bank fraud scandal, which saw $1 billion stolen from three Moldovan banks. Promsvyazbank, a Russian state-owned bank that supports Russia’s military-industrial complex, and which is also sanctioned by the United Kingdom, is a minority owner of the A7 network.
Shor received Russian citizenship in 2024.
Ukraine implemented its own sanctions against the A7 network in February 2026 and had been pressuring its Western partners to do likewise. In a February statement, the Ukrainian government described the A7 network as enabling payments to be made "for the supply of components used in the production of Russian missiles."
"The UK is leading the international effort and adapting its sanctions to stay ahead of Russian evasion, shutting down the payment routes fuelling its war machine against Ukraine," the British government said.
The new British sanctions package comes just under a week after the British government came under significant criticism for announcing a relaxation of incoming sanctions designed to target Russian oil and gas exports — specifically, by allowing the temporary continued import of liquefied natural gas from two export terminals in Russia and continued purchases of diesel and jet fuel refined from sanctioned Russian crude oil in third-party countries.
