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Mikhail Fridman, the Ukrainian-born Russian enterprise magnate who had change into the goal of worldwide sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine, appeared in a European court docket this week following a long-running investigation into actions of his private wealth. Fridman’s consultant informed court docket officers in an announcement the banking mogul’s life had been “destroyed” by insurance policies geared toward his funds.
Throughout a court docket listening to, Fridman’s authorized representatives decried the European Union’s allegations that the tycoon was responsible of “critical crimes.” His authorized crew denied the federal government’s claims he was the beneficiary of an alliance with the Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and accusations that Fridman had financially supported the nation’s navy efforts in Ukraine.
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The 59-year-old’s lawyer, Thierry Marembert described the EU’s proof as “not reliable” and “primarily based on nothing” in the course of the listening to, in response to Bloomberg.
Fridman constructed a fortune in post-Soviet Russia because the cofounder of Alfa Financial institution, the nation’s largest personal funding group. He was a stakeholder within the oil firm TNK-BP that was offered for $14 billion to the state-backed firm Rosneft in 2013.
An investigation into the embattled oligarch was scaled again in April after a raid was carried out at his London residence by the EU’s Nationwide Crime Company’s Combatting Kleptocracy Cell, an taskforce shaped to focus on Russian elites with Kremlin ties after the battle’s onset in February 2020. Fridman has denied allegations of sanction evasion or monetary fraud.
The probe was carried out on expenses of cash laundering and sanctions evasion. In January, the company dropped a part of its investigation into Fridman after a search warrant was discovered to be legally invalid. After being detained in December within the UK, Fridman’s authorized crew has challenged UK and EU sanctions.
Fridman is one in all a gaggle of Russian elites, a lot of them arts patrons, who’ve confronted heightened scrutiny following the invasion of Ukraine.
Throughout his tenure at LetterOne, the agency served as a sponsor to museum exhibitions, together with the Tate Fashionable’s 2019 retrospective on Natalia Goncharova. Fridman has up to now appeared at auctions and has reportedly been a shopper of Gagosian gallery. By way of the mega-dealer, he purchased a $38 million Warhol in 2013, in response to the New York Publish.
Sanctioned by the EU in February 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Fridman, alongside his enterprise companions, German Khan, Alexey Kuzmichev and Andrei Kosogov, stepped down from the London-based personal fairness firm LetterOne, the place they served as board members. Fridman stopped receiving dividends from the corporate’s investments on account of the sanctions. Fridman had been residing off a UK government-issued stipend following sanctions leveraged in opposition to him in March 2022.
Fridman, alongside his enterprise companion Petr Aven, is amongst a gaggle of choose Russian billionaires, together with former soccer magnate Roman Abramovich, who’re topic of authorized battles within the EU amid sanctions concentrating on their belongings and talent to journey internationally.
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