US imposes sanctions against Russian oligarchs and government officials

[PirateLT]

The measures announced by the Treasury Department on Friday were also aimed at 17 senior Russian government officials and the state-owned Russian weapons trading company, Rosoboronexport, which has long-standing ties to Syria and its subsidiary, Russian Financial Corporation Bank.

The punitive actions are the latest escalating step by the US to punish Putin's inner circle for interfering in the 2016 election and other ongoing aggressions across the globe in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria.

The White House said such targeted sanctions would help to ensure that Russian oligarchs profiting from the Kremlin's destabilizing activities, including its interference of Western democratic elections in 2016 and 2017, would face consequences for their actions.

"We cannot allow those seeking to sow confusion, discord, and rancor to be successful," President Donald Trump said in a statement released by the White House.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin cited Russia's occupation in Crimea and its ongoing efforts to supply the Assad regime in Syria with materials and weapons in a statement announcing the sanctions.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/russia-sanctions-oligarchs/index.html

[Lobo]

<<The White House said such targeted sanctions would help to ensure that Russian oligarchs profiting from the Kremlin's destabilizing activities, including its interference of Western democratic elections in 2016 and 2017, would face consequences for their actions.
"We cannot allow those seeking to sow confusion, discord, and rancor to be successful," President Donald Trump said in a statement released by the White House>>

?

Right after calling Putin to congratulate him on his "win" and to invite him to the White House? And after so many other statements, including recent ones, denying or strongly questioning whether Russia did anything untoward, either in our and other countries' elections, or the hacking of our power grid, or in the recent poisoning in Britain...?

Despite that statement, this action was apparently more a US State Dept response to Russia's military actions in Ukraine/Crimea and Georgia than to the other things. It's disconcerting to never know, from moment to moment, what our president is going to say or do about anything.

[PirateLT]

in the end the result is what matters.  I think Trump is just a bag of hot air and people are starting to realize it.  He got rolled on the budget and his veto threat was met with a yawn.  He is FOS most of the time.

[Lobo]

It would be helpful if he would order, or even just allow, our intelligence agencies and counter-intelligence people to take actions to defend the country, and spend some of that $128 million already appropriated for the task.

[btdt100]

Gee what a coincidence.  Rosoboronexport just happens to manufacture the SU-400 missile system that you consider 3rd world junk that other countries are jumping to buy because it can shoot down F-22s and F-35s.  Turkey is the one they are really upset about and hope to block. 

Suadi Arabia http://www.atimes.com/article/russias-s-400-missile-sales-new-middle-east-invasion/

India  http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-s-400-missile-defense-system-sold-to-us-allies-2017-10

Turkey http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41237812

Syria already got theirs

[PirateLT]

Poor Ruskie, hates when his comrades are outed.

[btdt100]

Who have you outed?  When? Where?  I missed it. Please share. 

[Irie]

Trump doesn't do anything to the russians and the leftists whine.....trump sanctions the russians and the leftists are silent.....what a bunch of clowns.....

[herman]

Lobo isn't a "leftist"?

[Irie]

Well, not that I mentioned lobo, but who cares about those pesky details......

[herman]

You complained that leftists were "silent" about the sanctions.

I pointed out that you're wrong: Lobo posted to this thread.

[Irie]

No, leftist, I commented that you leftists were silent; apparently lobo is honest....ergo he is not a leftist.

[herman]

You're whining that only one Democrat contributed to this thread?

LOL....it's a tough and lonely life you lead, little groper, that you are concerned about who posts to what thread on this forum.

[Irie]

No dullard, I am commenting of the fact that you morons whined when trump did not "punish" the russians then, and are silent now.....

duplicitous, per usual.....

[herman]

So, we should jump because you say so?

That's an odd way to treat people, irie.  It must be...stifling to be around you, with your expectations that people should behave in the ways you want them to.

[Irie]

Jump....don't jump....I don't give a shit.

I just find it tedious that you dimwitted fools whine when he doesn't, then when he does......

Expected, but inane....

[herman]

"The officials declined to elaborate on why Putin was not directly targeted, but said several people in the Russian leader’s inner circle were being sanctioned."

Belated, but a beginning.  

.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-imposes-sweeping-new-sanctions-on-russian-elite/2018/04/06/97df2782-398e-11e8-b57c-9445cc4dfa5e_story.html?utm_term=.4a7e64f143f6

U.S. Sanctions Ensnare Russians with Ties to Trump World

The Trump administration imposed new economic sanctions on Russian politicians, tycoons and businesses Friday in its most aggressive response to recurring ­cyber offensives and Moscow’s attempts to undermine Western democracies.

The measures take aim not only at Russians directly connected to the Kremlin but also several with links to President Trump’s campaign or his associates who have been scrutinized in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

The sanctions continue the Trump administration’s trend of taking increasingly bold moves against Russia under pressure from Congress even as Trump holds out the possibility of warmer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry vowed a “harsh response” and said the measures would be as ineffective as previous rounds of sanctions.

The list includes 17 Russian government officials, a state-owned weapons trading company and seven oligarchs. Several of the individuals have close ties to Putin, including the son of a childhood friend of the Russian president, and an energy executive who vacationed in a dacha near the Putin family and married his daughter.

Some of the oligarchs, such as natural resources magnates Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, made their fortunes in the 1990s and have looser connections to Putin. Others got rich running some of Russia’s biggest state-controlled energy and financial firms, including the energy giant Gazprom and the state-controlled bank VTB.

But what sets Deripaska and Vekselberg apart from the many other Russian tycoons who did not make the list is their connections to the Trump world.

Deripaska, for example, was once a business partner of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is facing money-laundering charges. A top executive at a U.S. company affiliated with Vekselberg donated to the Trump inauguration fund, and Vekselberg attended the inauguration.

Other people whose names have surfaced in connection with the Russia investigation also ended up on the Treasury’s list. Konstantin Kosachev, a Russian lawmaker who led soft-power initiatives for the government and surfaced in a now-famous dossier alleging the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 election, was sanctioned Friday. So was Alexander Torshin, a little-known deputy central bank governor who rose to public interest in the United States only after his efforts to promote gun rights in the United States landed him at a table with Donald Trump Jr. during a 2016 National Rifle Association conference.

The list of targets also includes Igor Rotenberg, the son of a Russian tycoon who grew up taking martial arts classes with Putin, and Kirill Shamalov, who also grew up in a family close to the Putins and who the Treasury said married Putin’s daughter in 2013.

The action also sanctioned top national security officials, including Nikolai Patrushev, a former KGB officer and longtime secretary of the Security Council of Russia, and Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Russia’s interior minister.

The sanctions freeze any assets the individuals or entities named hold in the United States and prohibit U.S. citizens from conducting business with them — even if they work for international companies outside the United States. The Treasury Department said it would issue guidance to Americans on how to unwind from any business interests they have with them in a way to avoid being punished for violating sanctions.

The real power of sanctions is they discourage international financial institutions, which typically conduct business at least partially in U.S. dollars, from doing business with them. The administration explicitly warned that non-Americans may face sanctions themselves for facilitating significant transactions with the people and companies named.

Senior administration officials on Friday stressed that the sanctions were not aimed at the Russian people. Instead, they were meant to cripple the finances of those elites who have “disproportionately benefited from the bad decisions made by the Kremlin on their behalf,” one of the officials said.

The officials declined to elaborate on why Putin was not directly targeted, but said several people in the Russian leader’s inner circle were being sanctioned.

“I think it’s important to see in today’s action a message. And that message is that actions have consequences,” said another senior administration official, who spoke to reporters only on the condition of anonymity. “Today’s announcements are the result of a decision that the Russian government has made and continues to make in choosing a path of confrontation.”

Russia accused Washington of futile scaremongering that has included denying visas and seizing property and financial shares. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the United States had forgotten that the seizure of property and foreign money amounts to “plunder.”

In recent weeks, Trump’s top advisers have pushed for tougher actions against the Kremlin after the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain, interference in the 2016 U.S. election and a cyberattack against Ukraine and other countries last year that was described as the most costly in history.

The sanctions won quick support from Congress, which has pushed for tough moves against Putin’s inner circle since last year, when it passed legislation requiring the Treasury Department to publish a list of Russian oligarchs. Trump signed the legislation after it passed with a veto-proof majority, even as he called it a seriously flawed and unconstitutional bill.

“These new sanctions send a clear message to Vladimir Putin that the illegal occupation of Ukraine, support for the Assad regime’s war crimes, efforts to undermine Western democracies and malicious cyberattacks will continue to result in severe consequences for him and those who empower him,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

The Kremlin has expressed increasing exasperation with policies under the Trump administration despite hopes that the president would take a softer approach toward Moscow. Last week, the United States expelled 60 Russian spies and diplomats in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter. It was the largest expulsion of Russians in U.S. history. Russia, in turn, expelled 60 U.S. officials.

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, meanwhile, tweeted that he is “looking at the new US sanctions list of Russian officials and oligarchs and thinking back of the day when they had champagne celebrating Trump’s victory. I am laughing.”

[herman]

Again, you appear to expect posters here to conform to your expectations of what they should do.

It must be so much fun to be around you irl.....

Oh, by the way, I've provided more details of the sanctions.

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 12:32:28 AM UTC-4, Irie wrote:

[Irie]

I expect posters to be consistent....a bar you apparently find unachievable....

 

[herman]

South China Morning Post

http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2140657/us-slaps-sanctions-more-russian-oligarchs-officials

Russia has promised retribution for new US sanctions that were slapped on seven Russian oligarchs and 17 Russian government officials on Friday.

The US said the sanctions were in response to what it called “malign activity” around the world, as the Trump administration tried to show that US President Donald Trump is taking tough action to stand up to Moscow.

“We will not let the current attack, or any new anti-Russian attack, go without a tough response,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a key target of the sanctions, called them “groundless, ridiculous and absurd.” 

“The events this morning are very unfortunate but not unexpected,” Deripaska said in a statement provided by a spokesperson for Basic Element, one of his businesses. 

“Certainly the grounds for putting my name on the list of SDNs as provided by US officials are groundless, ridiculous and absurd,” he added, using the acronym for Specially Designated Nationals.

A dozen Russian companies owned by the oligarchs were also targeted, along with a state-owned arms-dealing company and a subsidiary bank, the Treasury Department said. 

Senior administration officials cast the penalties as part of a concerted and ongoing effort by the US to push back Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government and his inner circle, emphasising that since Trump took office last year, the US has punished 189 Russian-related people and entities with sanctions.

Trump has continued to avoid directly criticising Putin himself, and recently invited the Russian leader to meet with him, possibly at the White House. 

Still, in recent weeks Trump’s administration has rolled out a series of actions – including several economic and diplomatic steps – to increase pressure on Putin and those in his circle.

“Nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have,” Trump said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Rather than punishing Russia for one specific action, the new sanctions are in response to “the totality of the Russian government’s ongoing and increasingly brazen pattern” of bad behaviour, said the officials, who weren’t authorised to comment by name and briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

The sanctions freeze any assets that those targeted have in US jurisdictions and bars Americans from doing business with them. 

It was not clear whether any of those hit have significant, or any, holdings that would be covered and most of them were warned of possible penalties in January when they were identified as possible targets on lists published by the Treasury and State departments. 

The administration officials said Americans who may currently have business with them would be given guidance about how to wind down that business and avoid running afoul of the sanctions.

The officials ticked through a list of activities they said had prompted the US to act, including Russia’s annexation of Crimea, backing separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, cyber-hacking and attempts to subvert Western democracy.

There was no immediate reaction from Russia’s government.

Many of the targets are individuals and businesses associated with Russia’s energy sector, including those affiliated with state-owned Gazprom.

Officials said the goal was to show that those who have benefited financially from Putin’s position of power are fair game for US punishments, noting that many of those being sanctioned are closely tied to Putin himself.

Targets include:

● Kirill Shamalov, who married his daughter Katerina Tikhonova, although neither Putin nor the Kremlin have acknowledged that she is his daughter.

● Igor Rotenberg, the son of Arkady Rotenberg, a friend of Putin’s friend since they were teenagers.

● Andrey Kostin, named among government officials, heads the nation’s second-largest bank, VTB, which is controlled by the state.

● Alexei Miller, the long-time head of the state-controlled Gazprom natural gas giant. Both Miller and Kostin are long-time key members of Putin’s team.

Other oligarchs on the list include some top names on the Forbes’ list of billionaires, aren’t part of Putin’s inner circle but like any other billionaire tycoons in Russia they vie for the Kremlin’s attention to preserve and extend their business empires.

Also targeted is aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska, a figure in the Russia investigation over his ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. 

Deripaska has been targeted with US sanctions previously, but officials said those being announced Friday were more comprehensive.

Many of the Russian oligarchs and politicians and affiliated businesses had already been identified by the Treasury and State Department as potential targets on a list that was compiled and published in January.

One of those hit by Friday’s sanctions, Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, expressed surprise he had not already been blacklisted by the US.

“As far as I am concerned the only thing I’m surprised at is that this didn’t happen earlier,” he told the Interfax news agency. “I never made secret of my criticism of the US foreign policy, and I will not change my stance.”

The sanctions freeze any assets that those targeted have in US jurisdictions and bars Americans from doing business with them. 

But the administration said it would give guidance to Americans who may currently have business with them about how to wind down that business and avoid running afoul of the sanctions.

The Trump administration used a variety of legal mechanisms to implement the sanctions, including the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. 

Known as CAATSA, the law was overwhelmingly passed by Congress in 2017 and signed by President Donald Trump despite some objections. 

The law aims to punish Russia for interfering in the US election as well as actions intended to subvert democracy in Europe. 

The law also authorises the president to impose sanctions on Iran for destabilising activity in the Middle East and North Korea for its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

Last month, the US targeted 19 Russians and five other entities with sanctions in the first use of the law. 

The administration has also expelled dozens of Russian diplomats and shut down two Russian consulates in response to Russian behaviour, including the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain that has been blamed on Moscow.

[herman]

I consistently provide details and facts - which, btw, is more than you've done on this thread.

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 1:01:50 AM UTC-4, Irie wrote:

I expect posters to be consistent....a bar you apparently find unachievable....

[Lobo]

<<No, leftist, I commented that you leftists were silent; apparently lobo is honest....ergo he is not a leftist.>>

American by birth, Southern by the grace of god... and blessed with the brains to be a leftist, thank you...

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 12:27:18 AM UTC-4, Irie wrote:

[Minister Rebel]

Something you need to polish up on fool.

[Minister Rebel]

The truth is, the new sanctions do not effect Putin, come on guys, keep up with the facts. Those that are targeted are rich Russians stashing the cash abroad.

[Minister Rebel]

LONDON — The U.S. slapped fresh sanctions on several wealthy Russians with ties to the Kremlin on Friday, a move trumpeted as one of the most aggressive actions taken against Moscow by the Trump administration.
But some experts have warned that trying to squeeze these so-called oligarchs will do little to immediately harm Russian President Vladimir Putin — and is unlikely to bring about a significant change in his policies that have vexed the West in recent years.
Among the 24 Russians and 14 companies sanctioned by the Treasury there were seven oligarchs, people who have amassed vast fortunes in often shady circumstances thanks to their close ties with the Kremlin.
"I'm all in favor of striking back against these corrupt oligarchs," said Mark Galeotti, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague. "But if we think this is going to make Putin think twice, that's a big mistake."
Among those named was Oleg Deripaska, a man known not just for the billions he accrued as an aluminum magnate but also because of his ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Another, Kirill Shamalov, is reportedly Putin's son-in-law and Russia's youngest billionaire thanks to his large stake in the petrochemical giant Sibur.
Igor Rotenberg is the son of Arkady Rotenberg, Putin's childhood friend and erstwhile judo sparring partner.
Also sanctioned were Vladimir Bogdanov, Suleiman Kerimov, Andrei Skoch and Viktor Vekselberg.
They were punished because of what the Treasury called Russia's "malign activity around the globe," namely its actions in Ukraine, Syria, and its attempts to meddle in Western elections, including in the U.S.
"The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites," the Treasury said, adding that these people "who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government's destabilizing activities."
Pressuring Putin's rich friends equates to pressuring Putin — at least that's the theory.
"The guys we're talking about now, they are very, very rich, but they do not have power over the Kremlin."