Jack Hanick spent years openly helping a Russian mogul who had been under U.S. sanctions set up a pro-Kremlin TV empire. For most of the past decade, the Justice Department didn’t appear to consider the ex-Fox News staffer too important a target.
But when it came to the newest sanctions and export controls levied in 2022, there wasn’t much the task force or other parts of the department could immediately do in terms of criminal prosecutions. Once such measures are in place, it could be months before people try to evade them, and it can take longer to build a criminal case against those people.
One of the department’s newest cases — unveiled this year — targets an alleged associate of Viktor Vekselberg , a Russian oligarch first sanctioned in 2018 as part of a U.S. crackdown on a range of Kremlin activity the U.S. deemed malign. One of his alleged associates is accused of using shell companies to pay to maintain U.S. properties owned by Vekselberg and trying to sell two of them.
The documents cite Bonham-Carter emails dating back several years, including some from the immediate months after the man he allegedly called “boss” was sanctioned in April 2018. The indictment states that Bonham-Carter repeatedly noted in the emails that Deripaska was sanctioned and that it made his job harder.Aleksandr Babakov and two of his staffers are accused of conspiring to evade U.S.
Like many of the other people targeted in the past 13 months’ flurry of indictments, Voronchenko, a Russian national with U.S. legal permanent residency, is out of reach. After federal agents served him with a grand jury subpoena in May 2022, he left the United States, eventually landing in Moscow, according to Justice Department statements.
What’s not clear is whether prior to 2022 the Justice Department, or the White House for that matter, put enough pressure on other countries to cooperate. And in many Ukraine-related cases, such as that of some oligarchs, it’s not clear why the U.S. didn’t go ahead and indict people who weren’t in custody anyway, at least to send a signal.
Several former officials said much of the department’s actions come down to a question of political will. But pursuing indictments also takes time, money and people — all finite resources. That latter point draws a lot of sympathy from former federal prosecutors. Now, better-aligned U.S., British, and other European sanctions regimes have reduced the dual criminality hurdle.
The official added, however, that one important ingredient for a successful sanctions campaign against Russia is to have Treasury can levy fines on alleged violators; it also can impose new sanctions on people it believes are helping others evade sanctions, thus blocking their access to the U.S. financial system. Such efforts generally require meeting lower legal thresholds than criminal prosecutions.
Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine were more of a surprise and on a smaller scale. Western countries put their hopes in the Minsk agreements, a set of negotiated deals aimed at ending the fighting that ultimately failed. The U.S. and its allies also needed Russia’s cooperation on everything from the Iran nuclear deal to energy production.
“I do wonder, if we had cracked down earlier on the Russian dirty money infiltrating the West and polluting our political system, would it have created different power centers in Russia? Would it have exposed Putin earlier when he was in a weaker position to deal with it?” asked Brian O’Toole, a former Treasury Department sanctions official.
During his presidency, Trump sought good relations with Putin, whom he openly admired. His administration imposed many sanctions on Russia, in part due to laws passed by Congress and the pressure brought by evidence of Russian interference in U.S. elections; that includedthe actual Russia-Ukraine war wasn’t a top Trump priority.
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