Washington on Tuesday announced new economic sanctions against Russian companies and oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin, including Andrey Guryev, owner of London’s largest private estate behind Buckingham Palace.
“Putin’s allies grew rich and financed opulent lifestyles,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement.
Joe Biden’s minister assures that the Treasury “will use all the tools at its disposal to ensure that Russian elites and supporters of the Kremlin are held accountable for their complicity in a war that has cost countless lives.”
“One of the largest steel producers in the world” noted
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has thus frozen the assets of Andrey Guryev, founder of the fertilizer company Phosagro, a “close associate” of Vladimir Putin and a former member of the Russian government. The oligarch owns Witanhurst Mansion, London, the second largest private residence in London, after Buckingham Castle. It had already been sanctioned by the UK.
His yacht, the Alfa Nero, bought for 120 million dollars in 2014 and flying the Cayman Islands flag, is also in the sights of the Treasury, which specifies that the ship “would have deactivated its geolocation device to avoid its seizure”.
Also on the Treasury list is the Magnitogorsk steelmaker (MMK), “one of the largest steel producers in the world” and “one of the largest contributors to Russia, providing a substantial source of revenue for the government”, as well as two subsidiaries and its main shareholder, the oligarch Viktor Rachnikov.
The former gymnast and Duma deputy Alina Kabaeva, at the head of a “pro-Kremlin” media group, and to whom the media attribute a relationship with Vladimir Putin (which the latter denies), already on the EU blacklist, also has its assets frozen in the United States.
Source: BFM TV
