A billionaire and “close” partner of oligarch Roman Abramovich has become the first person to challenge the UK’s Russian sanctions regime in a London court.
(Bloomberg) — A billionaire and “close” partner of oligarch Roman Abramovich has become the first person to challenge the UK’s Russian sanctions regime in a London court.
Lawyers for Eugene Shvidler, who has long been associated with Abramovich, filed the claim last month, saying that the UK made “significant errors” in its assessment of Shvidler’s relationship with the former owner of Chelsea Football Club. Shvidler, a British citizen who saw his private jets impounded by the UK, says he’s suffered “serious hardships” since being designated last March, and sought to push back against a government minister who dubbed him a Putin crony.
Shvidler’s case will be the first to be scrutinized by British judges since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The billionaire was also one of the first people to be hit with an asset freeze in a rush of measures in the early days of the conflict and wants the court to quash the “unlawful” order, according to a legal document, filed a year to the day of start of the invasion.
The legal challenge comes as the UK, which has sanctioned more individuals than either the EU or the US, looks for ways to broaden the power and scope of the existing sanctions tools to go as far as allowing the government to seize assets. Shvidler is one of the few tycoons hit by sanctions to claim to never have held a Russian passport.
He built his fortune from the oil major Sibneft following the privatization of Russian industrial assets during the final throes of the Soviet Union, and has a close connection to Abramovich. Until the sanctions hit, the two held stakes in London-registered steelmaker Evraz Plc.
The UK sanctioned Abramovich on March 10, with the European Union following days later. The measures led to a court in the English Channel tax haven of Jersey freezing more than $7 billion of assets linked to him, equal to half his estimated wealth.
The UK said Shvidler has had a “close relationship for decades” with Abramovich and profited from their connections.
The case is set to be heard within 28 days, with Shvidler’s lawyers asking for an “expedited hearing.” In the UK, sanctioned individuals can only bring a court claim after asking for an internal administrative review of the decision making.
“The UK Government was wrong to sanction me,” Shvidler said in a statement. “I hope that the UK courts will agree and give me justice.”
Shvidler also told Bloomberg that he’d succeeded in getting UK the then Transport Minister Grant Shapps to delete a series of tweets and video of a plane belonging to Shvidler, in which the then minister of transport said “Putin’s cronies” were being brought to heel by sanctions. The tweet has since been removed.
“I wrote to him pointing out that this was completely wrong and two weeks ago he deleted those tweets. He did that because he knew that what he said was wrong. It was an abuse of power,” he said.
Shapps didn’t respond through messages sent to the energy ministry that he now leads.
Oleg Tinkov, a self-made billionaire who publicly condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion and renounced his Russian citizenship, applied to be removed from the sanctions list this week.
The Foreign Office said it has imposed an “unprecedented package of sanctions in order to damage Putin’s capacity to fund his illegal war.”
“UK sanctions are designed within a fair and transparent legal framework that provides protections for those designated,” a spokesman said. “This means that every sanctioned individual or entity has the right to challenge their designation and there is a clear legal route to do so.”
The case is set to consider the extent to which Shvidler “is an involved person” whose activities benefit the Russian government. His lawyer, Michael O’Kane at Peters and Peters, argued that the designation is disproportionate.
“He cannot conceivably influence Russian government policy in Ukraine which is meant to be the purpose of these sanctions.”
(Updates with details of UK government minister’s tweets taken down from second paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.