OREANDA-NEWS  The UK has fined Russian businessman Peter Aven almost a million dollars for circumventing sanctions. Bloomberg writes about this with reference to the court's decision.

The management company servicing the billionaire's property in the United Kingdom has agreed to pay more than 750,000 pounds (about $963,000) in the case against Aven in order to end a two-year police investigation "into sanctions evasion." In accordance with the law on "proceeds of crime", the state also transferred cash that had previously been seized from the businessman's mansion.


The investigation against the businessman was launched due to a large transfer of funds (3.7 million pounds) that Aven sent from an Austrian trust to the UK a few hours before the EU sanctions were imposed against him. British law enforcement officers believe that the billionaire, without having a personal bank account in the country, used his wife's and management company's accounts as a "piggy bank", from which he paid his own expenses.

At the end of June, Russian billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky and his wife won a lawsuit to lift EU sanctions. At the same time, back in September last year, the European Court refused to lift restrictions to the entrepreneur (Pumpyansky is the former owner of a Pipe metallurgical Company), since the billionaire "participates in sectors of the economy that represent a significant source of income for the government" of Russia.