US excludes Russian businessman from sanctioned list

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has excluded Anatoly Karachinskiy, a co-founder of IBS Group from the sanctioned list.

According to the Meduza media outlet, this is the first time that the U.S. has lifted sanctions on a Russian businessman since the war in Ukraine began. However, the Department of the Treasury hasn’t revealed any reasons behind this decision.

In 2021, Karachinsky was ranked by Forbes as 149th richest person in Russia with a fortune of $800 million.

The U.S. government put the businessman on the sanctioned list in April 2022 due to Karachinsky’s membership on the supervisory board of Bank Otkritie. He left this position several days after that. At the time, Karachinsky also sold his share in IBS, an IT company he and his partners founded in 1992, soon after the decision by the U.S. government.

The businessman is also on the sanctioned list of Ukraine, while other countries haven’t imposed any sanctions against Karachinsky.

The U.S. and the EU have never lifted sanctions on big Russian businessmen since the beginning of the war in Ukraine,

On May 19, the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed personal sanctions against 46 individuals. This means that all their assets in the U.S. will be frozen and no American company or citizen can conduct business with them.

On the same day, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed sanctions against 71 entities in Russia (69), Armenia (1) and Kyrgyzstan (1) for their support of the Russian state.

Earlier this month some media outlets reported that the U.S. and the U.K. are thinking about imposing secondary sanctions on an undisclosed number of Kazakhstani companies and banks which assist Russia to breach international sanctions.