The Court of the European Union satisfied the lawsuit of Peter Aven and Mikhail Fridman, shareholders of "Alfa-Bank", about their exclusion from the sanctions lists.
The EU Court annulled the sanctions against Friedman and Aven
A document was published on the court's website, which states that the Court granted the petition of Aven and Friedman and cancelled their stay on the lists of restrictive measures from February 28, 2022, to March 15, 2023.
As indicated in the document, the Council of the EU believes that Aven and Friedman are connected with other people subject to sanctions and with Vladimir Putin himself. According to the Council, they provided material or financial support to Russian decision-makers and supported actions and policies that jeopardised Ukraine's integrity, territorial sovereignty, and independence.
Aven and Friedman believed that the Board's evidence was neither reliable nor credible and that the latter's assessments were erroneous. The court granted their request.
The Court finds that none of the reasons stated in the original acts are sufficiently substantiated and that the listing of Aven and Friedman was not justified.
The court believes that the grounds put forward by the Council do not demonstrate that Aven and Friedman “supported actions or policies that undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, or that they provided material or financial support to Russian persons responsible for the annexation of Crimea or destabilization of Ukraine, or that they benefited from these persons".
An appeal may be filed within two months from the notification of the court's decision.
Friedman and Aven: what is known
Petro Aven, a citizen of Russia and Latvia, and Mykhailo Fridman, a citizen of Russia and Israel, are the principal shareholders of Alfa Group, a conglomerate that includes Alfa Bank. It is one of the leading banks in Russia.
After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, they left Russia but were sanctioned by the EU, Britain and the USA.
Sanctions against both businessmen were imposed from February 2022 to March 2023.
In the spring of 2023, it was reported that the billionaires wanted to sell their shares in Alfa Bank in order to get rid of the sanctions.
