The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the creation of a task force to prosecute billionaire oligarchs who helped Russian President Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine as part of an effort to apprehend and freeze the assets of persons who have violated the sanctions.
The task force will pool the resources of various federal agencies to enforce the sweeping economic measures the US has imposed as Russia continues its assault on Ukraine.
“We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to investigate, arrest and prosecute those whose criminal acts allow the Russian government to continue this unjust war,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The task force will be overseen by Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general. Andrew C. Adams, a former federal anti-corruption prosecutor in New York, will run day-to-day operations, according to several people briefed on his new role, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The task force’s announcement came after US President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to warn Russian oligarchs that the government was “joining allies Europeans to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their jets”.
The creation of the team, called Task Force KleptoCapture, adds to a series of actions Western leaders have taken in recent days in an effort to undermine Putin and Russia’s politically connected elite, which allegedly has close ties to the president.
By imposing potentially crippling sanctions on Russian financial institutions and starting to freeze trillions of dollars in assets controlled by Moscow and oligarchs, the United States and its allies hope to pressure Putin to withdraw from Ukraine.
The Biden administration has penalized several Russian entities, including the country’s top development and military banks, one of its sovereign wealth funds and a subsidiary of state-owned energy giant Gazprom.
The White House has tried to freeze Putin’s assets, as well as those of his foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and other Russian national security officials. It also restricted purchases of Russian sovereign bonds, blocked some Russian banks in Western financial markets and cut off Russia’s access to certain foreign technology products.
Russian oligarchs have invested their fortunes in assets across the world, and their ties to Putin have helped them gain influence and connections in the worlds of the arts, real estate, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
Some members of the Russian elite are reportedly rushing to sell their assets to protect them from seizure, presumably in anticipation of sanctions. One of the country’s most prominent oligarchs, Roman Abramovich, said on Wednesday he would sell Premier League football team Chelsea.
Other oligarchs with ties to Moscow have hired US lobbyists and law firms to try to weaken US sanctions laws, such as the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 measure that initially imposed sanctions on some Russian government officials in response to human rights abuses.
While many US law firms and lobbyists have stopped representing Russian entities, not all have done so. For example, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, one of the country’s largest law firms, appears to continue working on litigation related to the 2016 election with Alfa Bank, which the United States put under sanctions last week. The penalties for Alfa Bank were more lenient than those imposed on some other Russian financial firms and did not require Skadden Arps to sever its ties; the law firm did not respond to requests for comment.
Alfa Bank was founded by Ukrainian-Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman, whom the European Union penalized separately this week, noting that he “has been cited as a top Russian financier and facilitator of Putin’s inner circle”.
Adams has a track record of investigating Russian organized crime and recovering illicit assets. He joined the US Attorney’s office in New York in 2013 and worked in the organized and violent crime unit before helping to oversee money laundering investigations.
He has helped lead the anti-money laundering and criminal transnational corporations unit since 2018. Under his leadership, the unit has successfully prosecuted cases involving an Armenian criminal organization, a bribery and money laundering scheme involving Brazilian public officials and a gang. racehorse doping, among others.
The task force will include Justice Department prosecutors and investigators with experience in law enforcement related to sanctions, export controls, corruption, asset forfeiture, money laundering and taxes. And it will work with investigators from the IRS, FBI, Marshals Service, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security and Postal Inspection Service.
The task force will target people and companies that are trying to circumvent anti-money laundering laws, hide their identities from financial institutions, and use cryptocurrencies to avoid sanctions and launder money. The Justice Department said it will use civil and criminal forfeiture to seize assets belonging to persons subject to sanctions.
The department said its work will complement that of a transatlantic task force announced last weekend to identify and seize the assets of penalized Russian individuals and companies around the world.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
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