US Treasury Department is imposing more than 500 new sanctions on Russia’s war machine, indicts Russian businessmen
The US Treasury Department plans to impose more than 500 new sanctions on Russia and its war machine on Friday as the U.S. vows to keep up its financial pressure on Moscow with the war entering its third grueling year.
The sanctions represent the largest single tranche of penalties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. They come on the heels of a series of new arrests and indictments announced by the Justice Department on Thursday that target Russian businessmen, including the head of Russia’s second-largest bank, and their middlemen in five separate federal cases.
The Biden administration is seeking to demonstrate its unwavering support for Ukraine, even though Republican lawmakers allied with former President Donald Trump are blocking vital additional U.S. military aid.
The White House had promised major sanctions in response to the death last week of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in an Arctic penal colony. Biden said Thursday after meeting with Navalny’s wife and daughter that the sanctions would be “against Putin, who is responsible for his death.”
The planned sanctions were previewed by two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity before their release on Friday. Additional sanctions are expected from the State Department as well.
Thousands of sanctions have already been imposed on Russian officials, businessmen, banks, companies and entire industries since the start of the war.
Out of the Justice Department, the cases announced Thursday include charges unsealed in New York against sanctioned Russian banker Andrei Kostin and “two of his U.S.-based facilitators.” The facilitators, Vadim Wolfson and Gannon Bond, were arrested Thursday.
Kostin, the longtime president of state-owned VTB Bank, is charged with engaging in a scheme to evade sanctions and launder money to support two superyachts. He, along with the two others, is also accused of trying to evade sanctions by concealing his ownership of a home in Aspen, Colorado. The indictment says Wolfson and Bond arranged to sell the house and provide Kostin with about $12 million from the sale.
Michael Khoo, a co-director of the department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, said on a call with reporters that the announcement was meant to send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that “we’re not going away” and “we can play the long game as well” so long as the war continues.
The KleptoCapture task force enforces the economic restrictions within the U.S. imposed on Russia and its billionaires.
The Justice Department says over the past two years it has secured court orders for the restraint, seizure, and forfeiture of nearly $700 million in assets and has charged more than 70 people with violating sanctions and export controls.
The United States has been able to transfer more than $5 million of seized Russian assets to Europe in support of Ukraine’s defense, U.S. officials said Thursday. But the process of justifying each confiscation of alleged illicit assets in court is a painstaking one by law, playing out over years.
“The Justice Department is more committed than ever to cutting off the flow of illegal funds that are fueling Putin’s war and to holding accountable those who continue to enable it,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.