These three Putin confidants are the first to be hit by British sanctions in the Ukraine conflict.
London Great Britain has announced the first sanctions against Russian banks and oligarchs. The five banks affected are Rossiya, IS Bank, General Bank, Black Sea Bank and Promsyvazbank (PSB). London also punished three oligarchs and Putin confidants.
This is the “first salvo,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in Parliament on Tuesday. All business dealings with those sanctioned are now prohibited. The assets of the three men in Great Britain are frozen and they can no longer enter the country.
The same goes for any deputies in the Russian Duma who vote to recognize Ukraine’s breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The three billionaires belong to the so-called “Petersburg Connection” of Russian President Putin and have been on the US sanctions list for years. They were chosen because they were “long-time confidants of the Putin regime,” it said in London. The sanctions are aimed at these three oligarchs:
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He received his first oil export license in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s from then local politician Vladimir Putin. In 1997 he founded the oil trading company Gunvor in Geneva. Putin is said to have benefited from the business as a silent partner – which the president denies, however.
After Timchenko was hit with US sanctions following the 2014 annexation of Crimea, he sold his Gunvor shares. However, through his investment company Volga Group in Luxembourg, he still holds interests in the Russian gas and petrochemical sector and in the construction industry.
His fortune is estimated by “Forbes” magazine at more than 20 billion dollars, he lives, among other things, in a villa on Lake Geneva.
He is a judo friend of Putin’s from the 1970s. He founded SMP Bank in Russia twenty years ago and benefited, among other things, from construction contracts for the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, one of Putin’s prestige projects.
As a major shareholder and board member of SMP Bank, he is involved in supporting the Russian government, the UK Foreign Office said. The bank does business that is of strategic importance to the Russian government.
He is the son of Arkady Rotenberg, brother of Boris Rotenberg. After father Arkadi landed on the US sanctions list in 2014, he is said to have transferred a number of his interests (oil, real estate, finance) to his son. The junior has also been on the US sanctions list since 2018.
The British Foreign Office justified the selection with the fact that he is chairman of the board of directors of National Telematic Systems (NTS). “NTS operates in the transport sector, which is of strategic importance to the Russian government, so Igor Rotenberg, through his role as Chairman of the Board of Directors of NTS, favors or supports the Russian government,” writes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ukraine conflict: Criticism of sanctions against oligarchs
It was initially not clear how much wealth the three billionaires in Great Britain own. Observers reacted disappointed to this first serve, which seems to be not very ambitious to many. Labor MP Chris Bryant, who has long called for tighter money laundering controls in London, said the sanctions are “pretty thin.”
The London-based Putin critic and US investor Bill Browder also criticized the measures as “lukewarm”. “Where are VTB and Sberbank? Where are the other 50 oligarchs?” the activist tweeted. VTB and Sberbank are Russia’s largest banks and both are second-listed on the London Stock Exchange.
In British government circles, the limited list was defended. Rossiya is particularly important for the Kremlin and PSB for the Russian defense sector, it said.
In the past few days, Johnson had promised that access to the British capital market for Russian companies and the Russian government would also be cut off.
This could happen in a second round of sanctions if Russia further escalates the situation in Ukraine.
More: Putin and the law of might: How Russia breaks international law