LONDON: A former Russian minister and ally of President Vladimir Putin was found guilty of breaching sanctions along with his brother by a London court Wednesday, in the first such UK case.
\nDmitrii Ovsiannikov, 48, was found guilty of six counts of evading sanctions between February 2023 and January 2024, becoming the first person to be convicted for breaching the United Kingdom\u2019s Russia sanctions.
\nHis brother Alexei Owsjanikow, 47, was convicted of two counts of breaching sanctions, while Dmitrii\u2019s wife, Ekaterina Ovsiannikova, 47, was cleared of all charges by Southwark Crown Court.
\nThe brothers are due to be sentenced at a later date.
\nThe former minister breached restrictions imposed for his role in Russian-occupied Crimea by opening a UK bank account, receiving nearly \u00a380,000 ($100,000) from his wife, and a car from his brother.
\nWhen the bank realized he was on the UK sanctions list, it froze the account.
\nOvsiannikov was appointed by Putin as mayor of Crimea\u2019s largest city, Sevastopol, two years after the peninsula\u2019s annexation by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. He previously served as Russia\u2019s deputy minister for industry and trade.
\nAs a result, the European Union imposed financial sanctions on him in 2017, which the UK maintained after leaving the EU.
\nWhile the EU lifted its sanctions in February 2023, the UK ones still apply, banning him from traveling to and accessing funds in the country.
\nOvsiannikov traveled from Russia to Turkiye in August 2022 and applied online for a UK passport, which was granted despite the sanctions, as his father was born in the UK.
\nHe arrived in the UK to join his wife and two younger children in February 2023.
\nHis brother was convicted for paying more than \u00a340,000 in school fees for Ovsiannikov\u2019s two youngest children to attend a school in London.
\nHowever, he was cleared of three counts of sanctions breach involving arranging car insurance for his brother and buying a Mercedes-Benz.
\n\u201cWe are resolutely committed to increasing pressure on Putin, his cronies, and all those who aid his barbaric war in Ukraine,\u201d said Foreign Office sanctions minister Stephen Doughty.
\nGraeme Biggar, head of the National Crime Agency, said: \u201cThese convictions demonstrate not only that designated individuals are on our radar, but so are those who enable breaches of the regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: A former Russian minister and ally of President Vladimir Putin was found guilty of breaching sanctions along with his brother by a London court Wednesday, in the first such UK case. Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, 48, was found guilty of six counts of evading sanctions between February 2023 and January 2024, becoming the first person to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79438,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79424\/revisions\/79438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}