OFAC designates world’s largest diamoned miner and Putin’s daughters
The US government has imposed sanctions on a slew of new targets in response to reports of atrocities against civilians by Russian forces.
On 7 April, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (‘OFAC’) designated Alrosa, a Russian state-owned enterprise, and the world’s largest diamond mining company, responsible for 90 percent of Russia’s diamond mining capacity. The same day the Department of State said it had ‘redesignated Joint Stock Company United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), as well as its subsidiaries and board members. USC is a Russian SOE that develops and constructs the majority of the Russian military’s warships, likely including many of those used to bombard Ukraine’s cities and harm Ukraine’s citizens.’
The designations follow those of 6 April when OFAC announced sanctions against the daughters of President Putin, Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova and Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova; the wife and daughter of foreign minister Sergei Lavrov; and multiple members of Russia’s Security Council.
It has also imposed ‘full blocking restrictions’ on Russia’s largest privately owned financial institution, Alfa Bank, and six subsidiaries; Sberbank – which, says OFAC, holds ‘about a third of all assets in Russia’.
On the same day, 6 April, President Biden issued an executive order ‘Prohibiting New Investment in and Certain Services to the Russian Federation in Response to Continued Russian Federation Aggression.’ The EO introduces a ban on ‘all new investment in the Russian Federation by U.S. persons, wherever located, as well as the exportation, reexportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States, or by a United States person, wherever located, of any category of services as may be determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to any person located in the Russian Federation.’
