Russian Oligarch's EU Sanctions Case Fails on Appeal

A Russian oligarch’s attempt to dispute EU sanctions freezing his funds failed in an EU appellate court last week.

Russian businessman Musa Yusopovich Bazhaev, president of JSC Alliance who also served on the board of directors of Russian Platinum until 2022, had been seeking 1 million euros from the EU Council to compensate for the alleged damage to his reputation as a result of the sanctions. In his appeal, Bazhaev claimed that the evidence EU authorities relied on -- public information found on news websites, Wikipedia and his own company website -- wasn't enough to justify his designation.

The court said sanctions are sometimes, in fact, "based on publicly available sources of information, reports, press articles, secret service reports or other similar sources of information." It added that the war between Russia and Ukraine makes some independent investigations by EU authorities “particularly difficult in practice.”

The oligarch also challenged the determination itself, saying that he no longer serves on Russian Platinum's board and wasn’t directly tied with the Russian government, meaning he shouldn’t have been targeted by the measures. But the court said those measures were intended to target “influential businesspersons," including Bazhaev.

"The purpose of that criterion is in fact to exert maximum pressure on the Russian authorities, so that they put an end to their actions and policies destabilising Ukraine and to the military aggression against that country," the court said.

Bazhaev also argued that the sanctions were a disproportionate response, as he "would not be involved or consulted in any decision relating to the annexation of Crimea or the destabilisation of Ukraine."

The court disagreed. The EU has broad discretion to impose such measures, and they have previously been upheld in other, similar circumstances, it said. The court also denied that Bazhaev's fundamental rights had been violated, saying that the rights to private life and the freedom to conduct economic activity without interference aren't absolute and can be restricted under certain circumstances.