Syedur Rahman outlines the cases of Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman.
A European Union (EU) court has annulled some of the bloc’s previous decisions to designate the Russian oligarchs Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman.
The EU’s General Court ruled on 10 April that the bloc’s executive body had failed to justify its reasons for placing the Alfa Bank shareholders Aven and Fridman on the EU’s Russia sanctions list between February 2022 and March 2023.
The Luxembourg-based court ruled that the facts the EU Council relied on to justify its initial listings of the pair - including alleged close connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin and shareholdings in one of Russia’s largest private banks – were not enough to establish that the businessmen have benefited from, or financially supported, Russia’s war in Ukraine. The court also ordered the EU Council to cover Aven and Fridman’s costs for bringing the legal challenge.
The three-judge bench found that evidence of alleged benefits the two men gained from Putin’s political support of Alfa Bank in 2005 was too old to be linked to Russia’s attempted destabilisation of Ukraine, which has been the subject of EU sanctions since 2014.
The court, however, did not address the EU Council’s decision to continue the designations of the Russian-Latvian Aven and Fridman, the Russian-Israeli Alfa Bank co-founder, beyond March 2023. This is being challenged by the two men in a separate legal action that is due before the same court.
The EU Council sanctioned Fridman and Aven in February 2022, four days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was alleged they provided material and financial support to those responsible for the 2014 annexation of Crimea and other Russian activities in Ukraine. The EU had also accused them of taking part in the Kremlin’s efforts to lift US sanctions against Russia by travelling to Washington DC in 2018 as part of an unofficial Russian government delegation.
The UK sanctioned Aven and Fridman in March 2022 due to their alleged links to Putin and their shareholdings in Alfa Bank. They are still on the UK sanctions list. The US Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned the two men in August 2023 for operating in Russia’s financial services sector.
Six months ago, the EU’s General Court declined to lift sanctions on another Alfa Bank shareholder, German Khan, who had founded the bank with Fridman in 1990. The court found that the EU Council’s decision to list Khan for supporting and benefiting from the destabilisation of Ukraine through his shareholding in Alfa Bank was proportionate and justified.
