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US adds Russian citizen, German and Emirati companies to sanctions blacklist

Those designated today are Russian national Yury Orekhov and two of his companies, Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH and Opus Energy Trading LLC

WASHINGTON, October 20. /TASS/. The US administration expanded its list of anti-Russian sanctions on Wednesday, adding a Russian citizen and two German-and UAE-based companies affiliated with him, the US Department of the Treasury said.

"Today, in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated a Russian network that procured military and sensitive dual-use technologies from U.S. manufacturers and supplied them to Russian end-users," it said.

Those designated today are Russian national Yury Orekhov and two of his companies, Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH (NDA GmbH) and Opus Energy Trading LLC (Opus Energy Trading).

As a result of the designation, all US property of blacklisted individuals and companies will be frozen, and US citizens and companies are prohibited from engaging in any business contacts with them.

Earlier on Wednesday, the US has charged five Russian nationals and two oil traders that are Venezuelan nationals with sanctions evasion and money laundering. Under a 12-count indictment, charges were filed against Russia’s Yury Orekhov, Artem Uss, Svetlana Kuzurgasheva, Timofey Telegin and Sergey Tulyakov, and Venezuelan oil traders Juan Fernando Serrano Ponce and Juan Carlos Soto. According to the Department of Justice, Artem Uss is the son of Alexander Uss, the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Region.The statement alleged that the defendants were involved in "orchestrating a complex scheme to unlawfully obtain US military technology and Venezuelan sanctioned oil."

According to the Department of Justice, Orekhov and Uss were detained in Germany and Italy, respectively, on October 17 and will undergo extradition proceedings. If convicted, the defendants face a maximum of 30 years’ imprisonment.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that, in response to a request from the Donbass republics, he made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine. He underscored that Moscow does not plan to occupy Ukrainian territories, instead planning to demilitarize and denazify the country. In response, the West started introducing sweeping sanctions against Russia and shipping weapons and military vehicles to Kiev already worth tens of billions of dollars at this point.

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