Two Russian oligarchs placed on the European Union sanctions list, Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, won their case on Wednesday before the European courts.
“None of the reasons” put forward by the EU to sanction the two men “are sufficiently substantiated”, according to the CJEU.
This decision was described as “very, very bad” by Alexeï Navalny’s entourage.
Follow the full coverage
Ukraine: two years of war
European justice rules in favor of two oligarchs. Two Russian billionaires, Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, won their case before the European Court of Justice (CJEU) on Wednesday April 10, the European body announced. The two men, linked to the Alfa bank, a powerful Russian company which sought to circumvent European sanctions, had filed an appeal before the CJEU. They themselves were placed by the European Union on the list of Russian oligarchs sanctioned after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
But why this decision of the CJEU? “The General Court considers that none of the reasons stated in the initial acts are sufficiently substantiated and that the inclusion of Mr. Aven and Mr. Fridman on the lists in question was therefore not justified“, she detailed in a press release. Consequence: the court “annuls both the initial acts and the acts maintaining the lists of restrictive measures for the period from February 28, 2022 to March 15, 2023“, specifies the CJEU, based in Luxembourg.
A “very, very bad” signal, according to those close to Navalny
A year ago, around fifteen lawyers, including those of Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, representing Russian individuals or entities targeted by EU sanctions in the context of the war in Ukraine, wrote to European officials to protest against a process they considered tainted”of errors” And “irregularities“.”With the sanctions against Russia, we found ourselves faced with an unprecedented situation: the organization responsible for preparing the files had to, under political pressure, deal with the cases of hundreds of individuals in a very short period of time“, analysis for France 24 Clara Portela, specialist in European law at the University of Valencia (Spain).
Thus, the two oligarchs, also placed on the sanctions list by the United States, seem to have taken advantage of the lightness of the “evidence” accumulated against them. The European Union relied in particular on several press articles dating from 2005 to implicate Petr Aven and Mikhaïl Fridman. The latter told Russian media RBC that both were “satisfied” of the CJEU decision. Their victory is a “very, very bad” signal, for his part regretted on Telegram Leonid Volkov, a close friend of the former political opponent of Vladimir Putin, Alexeï Navalny, who died in prison in February.
-
Read also
VIDEO – A pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarch… who became religious in Switzerland
In total, more than 1,700 individuals and entities have been sanctioned by the European Union for their support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the start of the conflict.
