According to the court, the European Council did not present sufficient evidence of the involvement of Pyotr Aven and Mihail Fridman in Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
Petri Burtsoff,
Roni Kuronen
The EU court has removed the Russian billionaires Pyotr Avenin and by Mihail Fridman from the banned list. The issue is reported by, among other things, a British newspaper The Guardian.
The decision concerns the listing from February 2022 to March 2023.
The European Council ordered the assets of Russian billionaires to be frozen in February 2022. The justification for putting them on the sanctions list was that Fridman and Aven are close to the president Vladimir Putin inner circle.
Together with other oligarchs, Aven and Fridman criticized the sanctions decision and appealed it to the EU Court of Justice. In its surprising ruling, it decided today to remove the men from its sanctions list.
According to the court, the European Council did not present sufficient evidence that Aven and Fridman “undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine.”
The Russian opposition criticizes the decision
The recent decision has aroused outraged reactions among the Russian opposition. One of the critics of the decision is the late opposition politician To Alexei Navalny a close ally Leonid Volkov.
– Fridman and Aven have not said a single word in public about opposing a war of aggression, and they have not taken a stand against Vladimir Putin in any way. The EU Court gave them exactly what they wanted, and on a silver platter.
According to Volkov, the decision sends the wrong message to other Russian oligarchs and Putin’s friends.
Volkov seems to have turned his coat on the matter, because earlier he called on the EU Commission to soften the sanctions against men.