The Times: Russian oligarchs challenge “arbitrary” UK sanctions in court

The Russian businessmen have contested sanctions imposed on them after Russia invaded Ukraine and have denied having close links to President Putin.

Seizures of private jets and a superyacht from two alleged Russian oligarchs were driven by pressure from Grant Shapps, then transport secretary, on an “arbitrary” basis with no proof of wrongdoing, the appeal court was told on January 16, The Times reported on January 17.

Eugene Shvidler, worth an estimated £1.1 billion, was sanctioned because of his personal and business relationship with Roman Abramovich, the former owner of Chelsea Football Club,

Sergei Naumenko is not under sanctions but had his 192ft boat, Phi, seized while it was visiting the World Superyacht Awards in Canary Wharf, east London.

The legal challenge by the two men could set a precedent for appeals by 1,682 people sanctioned for alleged links to the regime of Russia’s President Putin.

Shapps, now the defence secretary, highlighted the seizure of two of Shvidler’s private jets in March 2022, tweeting in a now-deleted post: “Putin’s friends who made millions out of his regime will not enjoy luxuries while innocent people die.” The MP later filmed himself standing in front of the jets.

Shvidler, 59, is a British and US citizen who claims not to have seen Putin since attending the funeral of Boris Yeltsin, the former Russian president, in 2007.

He was a director and co-owner of the FTSE 100 steelmaker Evraz. Directors with Russian names were placed under sanctions but not those with English names, among them Sir Michael Peat, a former private secretary to the King.

Shvidler owns a mansion near the exclusive St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge, Surrey, the £116 million superyacht Le Grand Bleu, and the Château Thénac vineyard in the Dordogne.

Shapps described the seizure of Naumenko’s £38 million yacht in March 2022 as a “stark warning to Putin and his cronies”, and filmed a TikTok video at the quayside in which he claimed the oligarch was a personal friend of the Russian president.

Nigel Giffin KC, representing Naumenko, described him as a retired businessman who has “never had any connection of any kind with President Putin”. He said there was no contemporaneous record of Shapps’s reasons for detaining the yacht.