MOSCOW, October 20. /TASS/. Tuesday's searchers in US houses, reportedly associated with Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska, are not related to criminal prosecution, his spokesperson Larisa Belyaeva told TASS.
Washington Post reported earlier in the day the FBI was searching a Washington house owned by Deripaska as part of a criminal investigation into his activities.
"This is not true. The warrants are related to sanctions," she said.
On April 6, 2018, the United States imposed sanctions against Oleg Deripaska and the companies he controlled such as Rusal and the En+ Group, the Basic Element industrial group and the Russian Machines machine-building holding, B-Finance and Eurosibenergo and the GAZ Group.
Together with a number of other Russian businessmen who came under US sanctions, Deripaska was banned from entering the US. His assets in the US were frozen and American businessmen were banned from doing business with his companies.
On January 27, 2019, the US Treasury Department announced the lifting of sanctions imposed on Rusal, En+ and Eurosibenergo. However, this cost Deripaska his control over these companies. In particular, his share in the En+ holding decreased from 70% to 44.95%, in Rusal he still owns directly only 0.01% of shares, on which he had no right to receive dividends. The entrepreneur himself remained on the sanctions list.
In March 2019, Deripaska sued the US Treasury Department, stating that the sanctions against him were unfair and illegal, and the damage they caused was estimated at more than $7.5 billion. The businessman demanded that the sanctions be lifted since the conditions for their introduction were no longer relevant. In response, the US Treasury declassified some of the documents, which also became the basis for the introduction of restrictive measures. Deripaska called this data false.