US sanctions are expanded to take in a bank and some high-profile Russian billionaires, as Russia announces travel bans against nine prominent Americans.
President Obama has expanded the list of sanctions on Russians in response to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
Expressing disappointment that it had come to this, the US President said that several prominent billionaires and the Rossiya bank would now face travel bans and the freezing of their assets in the US.
Describing the US move as “unacceptable” the President Putin’s spokesman Dimitry Peskov said “the appearance of some of the names on the list causes nothing but extreme perplexity”.
Among those now facing having his assets blocked by the USA is Gennady Timchenko, the co-founder of Swiss-based oil trading firm Gunvor.
The US State Department said “Putin has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds”. But Gunvor denied this, saying in a statement “President Putin has not and never has had any ownership, beneficial or otherwise, in Gunvor… Any understanding otherwise is fundamentally misinformed and outrageous.”
The Geneva-based company said it was assessing the potential impact on the business of the restrictions placed on Mr Timchenko. In 2012 Gunvor traded some 2.5m barrels of oil a day – equivalent to almost 3 per cent of world supplies.
The company’s co-founder Torbjorn Tornqvist, who is not on the US sanctions list, told Reuters last November that it was looking at opportunities arising from the US shale gas boom, to export liquid petroleum gas from North America.
In 2013 Mr Timchenko, who is also the non-executive director of Russian gas company Novatek, was awarded the Legion d’Honneur by France.
Other billionaires named today by the USA were brothers Boris and Arkady Rotenberg.
Arkady Rotenberg, a long-time judo sparring partner of President Putin, owns Stroygazmontazh – which builds oil and gas pipelines for Russian state firms Gazprom and Rosneft. His companies were also involved in construction work ahead of the Sochi Olympics.
I guess this means my spring break in Siberia is off Senator John McCain
Russia later issued its own list of nine prominent Americans who would no longer be allowed to travel to Russia, including US senators Harry Reid, John McCain and the US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said “we have repeatedly warned that sanctions are a double-edged instrument and would hit the United States like a boomerang.”
Senator McCain, who addressed crowds of protestors in the Ukrainian capital Kiev in December 2013, said “I guess this means my spring break in Siberia is off, my Gazprom stock is lost and my secret bank account in Moscow is frozen”.
In a tweet, Speaker Boehner said he was “proud to be included on a list of those willing to stand against Putin’s aggression.”
Russian Bank Rossiya was also subject to US sanctions. The bank, which the US says has $10bn assets, “will be frozen out of the dollar” according to an official. President Putin also signed an executive order allowing further action against the Russian financial sector, energy, mining and defence companies.