The Biden administration has announced sanctions against several Russian oligarchs and government officials, in the strongest move yet to crack down on Putin’s business allies and his closest circle of advisers after the invasion of Ukraine.
The decision announced on Thursday by Washington targets people like Russian financial billionaire Alisher Usmanov, Nikolai Tokarev, chief executive of the oil company Transneft, and Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.
“These people and their families will be excluded from the US financial system, their assets in the US will be frozen and they will be barred from using their property,” the White House announced.
“The Treasury Department will transmit financial information and other evidence, as necessary, to the Department of Justice in order to support criminal and asset seizure proceedings,” the statement added.
Other individuals targeted by US sanctions are Boris Rotenberg, Arkady Rotenberg, Sergei Chemezov, Igor Shuvalov and Yevgeniy Prigozhin.
Meanwhile, the White House also announced that the State Department would implement visa restrictions on 19 Russian oligarchs and 47 of their family members.
The Treasury Department will also impose sanctions on seven Russian media entities responsible for spreading “false narratives that further Russian strategic objectives and falsely justify Kremlin activities”.
Broader US sanctions on Russian oligarchs were widely anticipated after the European Union published its individual target list and began confiscating some assets held by Russian oligarchs in Europe.
US President Joe Biden pledged that Russian oligarchs would be targeted in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night and established a task force at the Justice Department to implement the bans from a US perspective. police and justice authorities.
Earlier this week, the United States imposed sanctions on Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of Russia’s most important national investment fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
US government officials had previously told the Financial Times that they would base their sanctions decisions on a classified list of senior political figures and oligarchs sent to Congress by the Treasury Department in 2018.
The Biden administration has expanded its sanctions against Moscow in response to the increasing brutality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with new restrictions implemented virtually every day.
On Wednesday, new export controls were announced on sales of natural gas and oil extraction equipment, and officials said they would consider a complete ban on imports of Russian oil. Earlier this week, the United States took the drastic step of banning all transactions with Russia’s central bank to block Moscow’s access to the country’s $630 billion in foreign exchange reserves, leading to a sharp drop in the ruble.
The United States has also joined the European Union and Canada in banning Russian flights into their airspace, in yet another attempt to isolate Russia from the international community.
Translation by Paulo Migliacci
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