A new bipartisan bill recently proposed in parliament would impose a bounty on the heads of individuals or companies who helped Russia’s oligarchs evade Western sanctions.
of Sanctions Evasion Whistleblower Bounty Act — Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and James Lish (R-Idaho), Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) and Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota) ) will sponsor and pay informants. “Actionable Information” on sanctions evaders.
The aim is to encourage information sharing to help “arrest dangerous Russian oligarchs,” the White House told the Post.
“Terrorists, dictators and their henchmen often hide their ill-gotten gains from hiring family members or intermediaries in fake accounts to avoid sanctions,” he added. “To strengthen sanctions enforcement, our bill creates financial incentives to expose hidden loot to international investigators.”
Following President Vladimir Putin’s gratuitous invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the West has sanctioned several Russian oligarchs. The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a high-profile Kleptocapture Task Force to block access to luxury goods such as jets, superyachts and luxury real estate for sanctioned oligarchs.
To date, the US government has seized approximately $500 million in assets from sanctioned oligarchs. The money will be used to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine.
But many of Russia’s oligarchs have evaded sanctions thanks to the cooperation of their Western backers, who in part help hide their asset ownership through proxies such as lovers and bodyguards, according to a new report. are doing.
“These oligarchyes are sanctioned by the West for the purpose of punishing them, but undermining these sanctions would be impossible without Western backers: lawyers, bankers, consultants and other experts. Impossible,” said Miranda Patrucic, editor of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. told the Post.
Led by OCCRP, IStories and other media partners, the report is based on leaked 50,000 documents and emails. They reveal details of two particular oligarchs close to Putin, Boris Rothenberg, and his younger brother Arkady, a former judo sparring partner of the Russian powerhouse. They own properties in Spain, France and the US, some of which are currently frozen.
The report also describes how the oligarchy avoided paying taxes on some properties by setting up companies in offshore havens, known as ZPIFs, which operate like closed mutual funds. He also revealed how he hid asset ownership through new weaponized Russian investment vehicles. For example, the Rothenberg family, which includes Boris’ wife Karina, a Russian-born, US-sanctioned US citizen, was backed by former KGB officer and Russian Defense Ministry adviser Maxim Viktorov.
“The Rotenberg file shows once again that the military is not only on the battlefield, but in offices in Europe and the United States, fueling this system to the detriment of citizens around the world,” Patrčić said. Told.
Covert tactics make tracking and apprehending the perpetrators nearly impossible.
“If evasion takes place abroad, it’s difficult,” said a sanctions expert and partner at Strock & Strock & Lavan, who previously served as resident legal advisor to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. said Thomas Firestone, who was
“Working with foreign law enforcement is difficult and requires tracking the movement of funds across multiple jurisdictions. The U.S. government is devoting significant resources to making these cases a top priority. But it will take time.”
One successful example concerns the arrest earlier this year of former FBI senior officer Charles McGonigal, who was once in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York office. McGonigal is accused of secretly accepting money from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to remove him from the US sanctions list, in violation of federal law. Sergei Shestakov, a U.S. citizen and former Soviet and Russian diplomat who served as a federal court interpreter, has also been charged with sanctions evasion.
The bill comes amid reports that Evgeny Prigozhin, a former caterer of President Putin and leader of the Wagner Group of mercenaries, has launched rebel attacks against Russian cities. The rebellion was quickly crushed and Prigozhin fled to his neighboring country of Belarus, but the uprising put Putin’s power in jeopardy.
Sanctioned Russian oligarchs Arkady Rothenberg and Vladimir Potanin reportedly fled Russia during the Russian coup for Baku and Istanbul, respectively, in neighboring Azerbaijan.
A similar bill, the Enablers Act, was defeated in the Senate last December. This would have been the first major anti-money laundering law in the United States since 2002.
