The UK Government has announced a sanctions strike on seven Russian oligarchs, including Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.The UK Government has announced a sanctions strike on seven Russian oligarchs, including Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.
The UK Government has announced a sanctions strike on seven Russian oligarchs, including Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.

Abramovich sanctions: The 7 Russian oligarchs added to the UK's sanctions list

A number of prominent Russian oligarchs have been added to the UK’s sanctions list.

Other oligarchs have been sanctioned alongside Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has announced a full asset freeze and travel ban on seven men deemed to be “Russia’s wealthiest and most influential oligarchs”, according to the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), as part of the UK’s sanctions regime against Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine.

The UK Government had deemed that Mr Abramovich has obtained “a financial benefit or other material benefit from Putin and the government of Russia”.

Those benefits including “tax breaks received by companies linked to him, buying and selling shares from and to the state at favourable rates, and the contracts received in the run-up to the Fifa 2018 World Cup”.

He has also been targeted for his associations through “close business relationships and mutual assistance” with already-sanctioned Igor Shuvalov, a former Russian deputy prime minister and general director of Russian gas giant Gazprom.

The Foreign Office also concluded that Mr Abramovich “is or has been involved in destabilising Ukraine” via Evraz plc, a steel manufacturing and mining company in which he has “a significant shareholding and… exercises effective control”.

The department said the firm has been involved in “potentially supplying steel to the Russian military which may have been used in the production of tanks

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: “Today’s sanctions show once again that oligarchs and kleptocrats have no place in our economy or society. With their close links to Putin they are complicit in his aggression.

“The blood of the Ukrainian people is on their hands. They should hang their heads in shame.

“Our support for Ukraine will not waver. We will not stop in this mission to ramp up the pressure on the Putin regime and choke off funds to his brutal war machine.”