WASHINGTON, December 31. /TASS/. The US Department of the Treasury has imposed sanctions against the Russian non-profit foundation Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE) and two Russian citizens, the department said in a statement.
The restrictions targeted the director of this analytical center, Valery Korovin. Also, Judge Olesya Mendeleyeva was added to the US blacklist based on the "Magnitsky Act."
According to a statement released by the head of the State Department press service, Korovin and the CGE he heads were added to the sanctions list for ties to the GRU and for alleged interference in the 2024 US presidential election.
As indicated in the explanation of the State Department, Mendeleyeva was sanctioned "for her role in the arbitrary detention of Moscow city councilor and human rights defender, Alexei Gorinov." In July 2022, she sentenced him to seven years in prison in the case of discrediting the Russian army. According to the case files, at a meeting of municipal deputies on March 15, 2022, Gorinov stated that recreational leisure for Muscovites is unacceptable, since military operations are being conducted on the territory of a neighboring sovereign state. Gorinov did not admit guilt and became the first convicted person in the Russian Federation to receive a real prison term under this article. In 2024, the court increased the former deputy's sentence by three years for justifying terrorism.
Also, the Tehran-based Iranian Cognitive Research Center was subject to secondary sanctions for ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, elite units of the Iranian Armed Forces).