The European Court has denied Russian oligarchs Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan, as well as Gennady Timchenko and his wife Elena, a request to lift the European sanctions imposed on them.
The press service of the Court of Justice of the EU reported this today, September 11.
It is noted that after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, sanctions were imposed on the said individuals, requiring them to declare their funds and cooperate with the competent national authorities in the European Union.
The purpose of such restrictions is to prevent the use of complex legal and financial mechanisms aimed at circumventing sanctions or complicating the identification of funds and resources subject to sanctions.
For their part, the plaintiffs tried to prove in court that they had no connection with Russia’s war against Ukraine and argued that the EU Council regulation was an abuse of power, since such restrictions should be adopted at the level of member states.
The court dismissed the claims in full.
EU law allows the Council of the EU to adopt regulations for the purpose of implementing or bringing into force restrictive measures, in order to ensure that they are applied equally in all Member States. Measures provided for by EU law are not limited by obligations not to act, and the Council was entitled to impose reporting and cooperation obligations even if these were not expressly provided for in the decision to which they relate, the EU Court stressed.
The Court also considers that the EU Council did not act on behalf of the Member States in this matter.
On the contrary, national authorities retain the right to decide whether the offence of participating in bypass activities and the punishment for it will be of a criminal, civil or administrative nature, the court said in a statement.
It should be added that the Court of Justice of the EU in April annulled the EU Council decision of 28 February 2022 to impose sanctions against Aven and Fridman. According to the court, the grounds for their inclusion in the sanctions list were not sufficiently substantiated.
However, this decision did not apply to later decisions of the EU Council, so European sanctions against them are still in force.
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Source: Racurs
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