WASHINGTON: The United States imposed sanctions on the ultra-wealthy Russian oligarchs at the heart of President Vladimir Putin’s regime in the latest ratcheting up of pressure on the Kremlin to halt its invasion of Ukraine.
They and their family members “will be cut off from the US financial system, their assets in the United States will be frozen and their property will be blocked from use,” the White House said in a statement.
“The United States and governments all over the world will work to identify and freeze the assets Russian elites and their family members hold in our respective jurisdictions, their yachts, luxury apartments, money, and other ill-gotten gains.”
The sanctions match earlier EU measures against Russia’s wealthiest figures, but also include a ban on travel to the United States and preventing these targeted people from hiding their assets through transfer to family members.
“We’re adding dozens of names...including one of Russia’s wealthiest billionaires, and I’m banning travel to America by more than 50 Russian oligarchs, their families and their closest associates,” US President Joe Biden told reporters.
Biden accused oligarchs of “lining their pockets with the Russian people’s money while the Ukrainian people are hiding in subways from missiles” and he vowed to maintain “the strongest, unified economic impact campaign in all history” against Moscow.
Britain, a favourite destination for oligarchs, announced a similar full asset freeze and travel ban on billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov and former deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov. The pair, worth an estimated $19 billion, have “close links to the Kremlin,” the Foreign Office said.
That brings the number of oligarchs hit by British sanctions to 15.
The oligarchs, government officials and business owners who have amassed vast wealth in an economy where only Putin loyalists can get ahead, are seen as vulnerable because much of their wealth is tied to Western interests.
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