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Financially strangling the large circle of billionaires close to the Kremlin: the Western response to the invasion of Ukraine involves freezing the bank accounts, villas and luxury ships of the Russian oligarchs. Every day its new names. Since the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24, the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom have been extending their lists of those close to the Russian regime, who have become pariahs of the international financial system with the stroke of a pen. Even Switzerland and Monaco are joining the movement. Parliamentarians, high-ranking military officers, prominent journalists, leading industrialists and financiers…several hundred people are now subject to the freezing of their assets, sometimes accompanied by residence bans. Among them Nikolaï Tokarev, president of the oil and gas heavyweight Transneft and presented by the EU as a “longtime acquaintance” of Russian President Sergei Chemezov, boss of defense industry conglomerate Rostec, Russian-Uzbek businessman Alicher Ousmanov, referred to as “one of Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs”, or the head of the Russian development bank VEB Igor Chouvalov. How is the global hunt for these rich Russian expatriates close to Putin organized? The Express investigated.