Today the government has announced that a full asset freeze and travel ban has been imposed against Alisher Usmanov and Igor Shuvalov, 2 of Russia’s leading oligarchs with significant interests in the UK and close links to the Kremlin.
Alisher Usmanov has had significant interests in English football clubs Arsenal and Everton. He owns Beechwood House in Highgate, worth an estimated £48 million, and the 16th century Sutton Place estate in Surrey.
Igor Shuvalov’s assets in the UK include 2 luxury apartments in central London worth an estimated £11 million. He is a core part of Putin’s inner circle, and headed up Russia’s bid for the 2018 Football World Cup.
The Foreign Secretary will also establish an Oligarch Taskforce of ministers and officials from departments including the Home Office, Treasury, Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and the National Crime Agency. This expert group will coordinate cross-government work to sanction oligarchs, helping build cases against the list of oligarchs it has identified as targets.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said:
Our message to Putin and his allies has been clear from day one – invading Ukraine would have serious and crippling economic consequences. Sanctioning Usmanov and Shuvalov sends a clear message that we will hit oligarchs and individuals closely associated with the Putin regime and his barbarous war. We won’t stop here. Our aim is to cripple the Russian economy and starve Putin’s war machine.
These latest sanctions are part of a tough package against Russia, including sanctioning the Russian Central Bank, and banning the Russian State and all Russian companies from raising funds in the UK. The government will also asset freeze every Russian bank. In coordination with the US and other allies, these measures amount to the largest set of financial sanctions in history.
The government will continue to ratchet up pressure and use sanctions to degrade the Russian economy on a scale that the Kremlin, or any major economy, has never seen before.
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