OREANDA-NEWS. Billionaire Oleg Deripaska has filed a motion with the US Treasury Department of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to lift his sanctions. The request for the lifting of sanctions “in administrative order” was filed on June 27, 2019, follows from the memorandum sent by representatives of Deripaska to the District of Columbia court on November 5.

OFAC regulations provide for a person who is on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) personal sanctions list to apply to the board for review of this decision. The grounds for lifting the sanctions may be a “positive change in behavior”, the irrelevance of the reason for which the sanctions were imposed, or an actual OFAC error.

However, decisions to lift OFAC sanctions at the request of sub-sanctions are extremely rare. The Russian media sent a request to the lawyer of Deripaska in the USA Eric Ferrari of Ferrari & Associates. The representative of a businessman in Russia declined to comment. OFAC's lifting of sanctions is part of Deripaska's legal strategy along with ongoing litigation against OFAC. The businessman was included in the sanctions list on two formal grounds.