American authorities announced Monday, August 8, that they wanted to seize in Kazakhstan the Airbus A319 belonging to Russian oligarch and parliamentarian Andrei Skotch, which was targeted by American and European sanctions after the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
US justice has obtained an “arrest warrant” for the “seizure” of this private Airbus A319-100 belonging to Andrei Skotch, a Duma member accused of “connections to organized crime” and a string of sanctions Washington and Brussels is exposed. The press release from the Department of Justice, the Federal Police (FBI) and the Department of Commerce states that the plane has been in Kazakhstan since early March and values the device at “more than $90 million.” Washington released a photo and aircraft registration.
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“We will continue to use every legal remedy at our disposal to enforce our anti-money laundering laws and to prosecute those who attempt to use the American financial system to violate and evade sanctions,” the powerful prosecutor said Manhattan, Damien Williams. Andrei Skotch has been accused by the US Treasury Department since 2018 of having “longstanding ties to Russian organized crime groups”.
“task force”
US Attorney General Merrick Garland established a legal and financial department dedicated to prosecuting “corrupt Russian oligarchs” in March. This “task force,” dubbed “KleptoCapture,” includes more than 10 prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, and national security experts, as well as investigators from the FBI, IRS, and Post Office. The cell operates out of the Manhattan Courthouse in New York, the largest federal prosecutor’s office in the United States.
The East Coast megalopolis, the financial lungs of the world, is also the haunt of many Russian businessmen, who in particular control huge apartments around Central Park, each worth tens of millions of dollars. “An oligarchy is defined as a form of government in which a small group exercises control for their own selfish and corrupt interests. Its members in Russia have long cloaked their illegal activities in US dollars,” said FBI Director Michael Driscoll.
At the end of June, the US Treasury Department and its allied governments (Germany, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union) – united in the Repo “Task Force” – were responsible for tracing the legacy of Russian Elites (yachts, planes, cars, real estate…) – had frozen more than $330 billion in Russian assets since the start of the conflict in Ukraine at the end of February.