By Abigail Adcox, Breaking News Reporter
| June 30, 2022 03:42 PM
The Treasury Department has notified a Delaware-based trust that it is freezing over $1 billion in assets connected to a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
Freezing
the assets is another effort by the Biden administration to slap more punitive
measures on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies over the war in Ukraine.
Suleiman
Kerimov, a billionaire with close ties to Putin, was found to be financially
tied to Heritage Trust, the department announced Thursday. In early June, a $300 million
superyacht owned by Kerimov departed Fiji under U.S. seizure following
a legal dispute.
RUSSIAN-OWNED
SUPERYACHT LEAVES FIJI UNDER US CONTROL
"Treasury
continues using the full range of our tools to expose and disrupt those who
seek to evade our sanctions and hide their ill-gotten gains,” Treasury
Secretary Janet Yellen said.
The
trust, which was formed in July 2017, was used for the "purpose of holding
and managing Kerimov’s U.S.-based assets," the department said.
Thursday's
action is the result of an investigation into the extent of Kerimov's financial
holdings in the U.S. The Treasury Department sanctioned Kerimov in 2018 for
profiting off the Russian government's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in
2014.
Russian
oligarchs have gone to great lengths to hide assets in countries such as Cyrus,
Switzerland, Belize, and others to avoid foreign seizure.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/treasury-department-blocks-1-billion-assets-russian-oligarch
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