The U.S. Treasury has published a new sanctions list. Everyone laughed at Forbes’s "sanctions" list in January, but today it’s clearly no laughing matter.
Today’s list (placement on the SDN List) imposes specific sanctions on specific individuals, and it is fair to say that for at least one of them, these sanctions amount to a catastrophic blow to their business.
To recap, inclusion on the SDN List means:
“Any funds, property, real estate, bank accounts, company stakes, or publicly traded securities belonging to individuals or legal entities on the sanctions list are blocked. Until the sanctions are lifted or a special decision is made, the person will not be able to dispose of this property.
This type of sanction also means that no U.S. legal entities or individuals are allowed to conduct any transactions with persons on the sanctions list. For example, this means it is impossible to make bank transfers in U.S. dollars.”
What is notable about today’s sanctions?
From an economic standpoint, the sanctions against Oleg Deripaska (a reminder of our latest investigation into him) and all of his companies are, so far, the strongest and most destructive sanctions imposed on any individual. His business now faces dramatic changes.
Deripaska’s companies are effectively losing the ability to sell anything for export or to settle payments anywhere outside Russia. The United States was RUSAL’s second-largest market, and that market is now simply closed to them. Moreover, companies from other countries will also avoid buying anything from RUSAL, because the U.S. could place them on the sanctions list as well for doing so.
Previous sanctions allowed contracts signed before sanctions were imposed on a specific person to be carried out. Today’s sanctions require U.S. persons to fulfill or terminate all contracts by June 5, 2018.
What’s more, shares in EN+ and other companies must be sold by May 7, 2018. In just one month!
It is hardly surprising that these stocks look like this on the market today:
The sanctions imposed on Putin’s “effective managers,” Miller and Kostin, could potentially lead to their honorable retirement. No American company will be able to sign a contract with Gazprom or VTB as long as the names Miller or Kostin appear in it. Yes, Sechin has long been under similar sanctions and remains the head of Rosneft, but for Rosneft, even without Sechin, work with American service companies or any joint projects is simply off the table.
The other oligarchs who landed on the sanctions list—Bogdanov, Vekselberg, and Shamalov—were “luckier” than Deripaska in one respect: not all of their companies were included. But they, too, now face major changes to both their businesses and their lifestyles abroad, since they will also have serious problems with bank accounts around the world.
Russian media can finally stop writing their cowardly “Katerina Tikhonova, the alleged daughter of Vladimir Putin.” In the documents, the young billionaire Kirill Shamalov is explicitly described as Putin’s son-in-law and the husband of his daughter, Katerina Tikhonova.
The absence of Usmanov and Abramovich is disappointing, but let us hope their turn will come as well.
It seems that today Deripaska lost his “little house” in Washington. The mansion will be seized.
Overall, it can be said that the United States is continuing a fairly consistent sanctions policy designed for long-term effect. It is not sanctioning the entirety of the Russian Forbes list, but it is delivering a very tangible blow to specific individuals, including oligarchs who, according to U.S. authorities, serve the Putin regime. The idea that Deripaska’s example will give other oligarchs serious pause is not without merit.
For us, the citizens of Russia, these individual sanctions against Russian oligarchs and officials are beneficial. An oligarch is not our bro. Neither is a Putin official. These people steal our money and condemn our country to poverty and backwardness.
The time will come when it will no longer be the American state, but the Russian state itself, that goes after corrupt officials. Only we ourselves will do it a hundred times more forcefully.
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