sanctions on Putin’s daughters show a turn of the US and Europe

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By imposing sanctions on the adult daughters of Vladimir Putin over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Joe Biden administration cast aside the privacy the Russian president has long maintained about his closest ties, avoiding mentioning the full names of the two women in public and most other references to them as well.

The sanctions imposed on the immediate relatives of Putin and other Russian oligarchs also show enhanced US and allied techniques for enforcing financial sanctions to individuals.

In Russia in particular and in autocracies around the world, sanctioning family members is often essential to ensure that financial sanctions have the desired impact. Powerful and wealthy leaders often employ the tactic common to many tycoons of putting assets on behalf of spouses, children and others.

Assets on behalf of others

“In general, we want to hold accountable those who have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian state and elevated their relatives to some of the highest positions of power in the country,” said Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesman for the Treasury Department.

“But we also know that oligarchs and other sanctioned elites often try to move money or hide assets through family members or other associates,” he said.

The United States announced on Wednesday that it would target the assets of Putin’s daughters, Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova and Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova.

Bill Browder, a longtime influential campaigner for sanctions for human rights abuses in Russia, he said the move was “somewhat obvious, particularly in Russia’s kleptocratic establishment.”

President Joe Biden, increasingly harsh with the Russian Vladimir Putin. Photo: AP

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“You can’t just penalize the principal, you have to penalize the family because the family owns a lot of the principal’s assets,” Browder said. “We’ve seen this in so many different cases now,” he added.

In Putin’s case, expanding what are already thousands of Western sanctions over Russia’s war to include Putin’s family may hurt him personally, but it is not much of a threat to your wealth.

hidden wealth

Putin, no stranger to fears of concerted Western moves against him, is believed to have been careful to have hidden much of his estimated $200 billion or more with the Russian oligarchs he helped enrich, says Browder, whose decades-long campaign has reshaped the overall global sanctions regime.

Sanctions against relatives of oligarchs began to increase in early March, when the United States specifically targeted wives and daughters of oligarchs.

Family members of oil executive Nikolay Tokarev, including his wife, Galina Tokareva, and daughter, Maiya Tokareva, were said to have benefited from their proximity to Putin and the Russian government and were also affected by the sanctions. Maiya Tokareva’s real estate empire in Moscow has been valued at more than $50 million, according to the Treasury.

One reason family members are increasingly targeted is that recently passed anti-money laundering legislation helps federal officials reveal who the real owners of property are.

The orientation of family members goes both ways.

Russia sanctions the Biden family

Russia recently imposed a Travel ban on President Joe Biden’s sonalthough that was considered more of a symbolic insult, at most.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was dismissive in comments to reporters after Moscow imposed its travel ban in mid-March against administration officials, as well as Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton.

“It will not surprise any of you that none of us are planning tourist trips to Russia,” he said.

The Biden administration and previous administrations have included the children and spouses of leaders of other countries in the sanctions. That includes sanctions against relatives of military officers in the 2021 coup in Myanmar and sanctions by the Donald Trump administration against the son of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Kim Richard Nossal, a professor of political science at Queen’s University in Ontario, said financial sanctions against children of the rich and powerful fall into a special category of ethical considerations.

“Generally speaking, if my father commits a crime, it is always wrong to punish me,” Nossal said. “But if my father commits a crime and I benefit from it, most people would say that it is entirely appropriate for the community to limit the benefits I derive from someone else’s wrongdoing,” he explained.

“I think most people would say that the onus is on the family member to prove that you have not profited from the earnings of the person you are addressing,” he said.

The United States sanctioned Putin himself shortly after he launched the invasion. Wednesday’s new measures also point to the wife and children of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovthe main defender of Putin in the world, who had already been mentioned in the US sanctions for the invasion.

The British press reports that Lavrov’s 26-year-old daughter lived a luxurious life in London, including buying a multi-million dollar apartment for cash.

Putin emphasized the value of discretion in one of his few public mentions of his own daughters.

Tributes and pain in the farewell to dozens of dead in the bloody Russian attack on the city of Bucha, in Ukraine.  Photo: REUTERS

Tributes and pain in the farewell to dozens of dead in the bloody Russian attack on the city of Bucha, in Ukraine. Photo: REUTERS

The secret about the Putin family

“I never talk about my family with anyone,” Putin said at a news conference in 2015, according to the BBC.

“Every person has the right to their destiny, lives their own life and does it with dignity,” he added.

Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva in the 1980s when he was a KGB agent and she was an Aeroflot flight attendant. They divorced three decades later.

The oldest daughter, Maria, is a medical researcher who focuses on the endocrine system of children. She is also reportedly an entrepreneur and developer.

The youngest daughter, Katerina, was a competitive dancer turned technology developer, appearing publicly at performances and the occasional technology conference.

So far, the United States has not authorized the woman named in news reports as Putin’s longtime partner. Photos from public appearances document years of Putin smiling at Alina Kabaeva, an Olympic gymnast in her youth, as she presents him with bouquets and state honors.

Kabaeva then became a Duma lawmaker and then a board member of a Russian national media company, whose media outlets have promoted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As British tabloids noted, Kabaeva’s photo and name disappeared from the National Media Group’s website this week, as sanctions on Putin’s intimates drew closer.

Jailed Russian rights activist Alexei Navalny called for sanctions against Kabaeva in a tweet from his cell this week, saying one of the media outlets under his authority was taking the lead in presenting Western accusations of the Russian invasion as an orchestrated campaign of disinformation.

Source: AP

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