The Finance Ministry has publicly released 28 of the 50 names on the list, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian mega-billionaire Alisher Usmanov, among other senior government officials. Treasury officials declined to name the other 22. One person familiar with the matter, speaking candidly about the sanctions on condition of anonymity, said that administration officials usually do not want the names of oligarchs targeted by sanctions to be known in advance, because it could help them avoid punishment.
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The Treasury Department’s list reflects how Western allies are ramping up their efforts to ensure the effective enforcement of their sanctions measures, which typically block sanctioned individuals from accessing their assets. The United States has sanctioned more than 200 Russian oligarchs and entities following its invasion of Ukraine, according to an estimate by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. The European Union has sanctioned more than twice that number.
“Will this lead to the Brutus theory? [of Putin being overthrown]? Not in my opinion; it will not lead to a regime change,” said Dan Katz, who served as a senior advisor at the Treasury from 2019 to 2021 and co-founded Amberwave Partners, an investment management firm. “But it’s important to change the calculus and put personal pressure on Putin to influence his political coalition.”
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Attorney General Merrick Garland joined a virtual meeting of a new international task force on Wednesday morning. The multinational working group includes representatives from America, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the UK and the European Commission.
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“The Treasury Department’s priority right now is to expand the global coverage of individuals who have already been sanctioned by the U.S. inspection, and I think they give countries an opportunity to say they’re joining the international effort,” said Daniel Glaser, who worked for the Office of Combating with terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration, and is currently the global head of jurisdictional services at K2 Integrity, a risk compliance firm.
The Justice Department also announced a separate event called Task Force KleptoCapture to coordinate multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Southern District of New York, in an attempt to find out where sanctioned Russians are storing their resources.
The sanctions against the Russian elite are part of a broader Western effort to financially punish Russia for invading Ukraine. Many of these measures, such as targeting the country’s central bank reserves, are likely to hurt the country as a whole, but sanctions on oligarchs are meant only for a small circle of powerful people.
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“Forcing people close to Putin to pay for this, in my opinion, is ideal. … They have definitely gone a lot further than they have in the past,” said Dean Baker, a liberal economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a centre-left think tank. “It’s not clear how many people can really influence Putin, but these are the people you want to hit the most. I don’t see any cons.”
Russia responded to the West’s economic countermeasures Tuesday by imposing sanctions on President Biden, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and other administration officials. However, these measures are considered ineffective because few Americans have Russian bank accounts or any assets in that country.
Usmanov’s company, Metalloinvest, a mining company, said in a previous statement that it considers the sanctions against him “unreasonable and unfair.” Usmanov also issued a statement accusing the EU of “false and slanderous statements damaging my honor, dignity and business reputation.”