Sanctions based on flimsy evidence serve only to annoy, not influence, their targets

Roman Abramovich was forced to sell Chelsea FC after he was placed under sanctions. UEFA via Getty Images

European lawyers and academics are increasingly exercised about the continued use of sanctions against individuals the British government and EU regard as being closely associated with Vladimir Putin’s regime.

What irks them is that they are being imposed on the thinnest of evidence, to justify a political end.

The recent case before the Supreme Court of the sanctions placed on Eugene Shvidler, associate of sanctioned multibillionaire and former Chelsea FC owner, Roman Abramovich, has raised hackles.

What drew attention was the 20-page, particularly trenchant, dissenting judgment of the UK Supreme Court’s Lord Leggatt. In it, he used a most non-judge word to describe the move against Shvidler. It was "Orwellian" and he wrote: "I do not consider that the reasons relied on by the government come close to justifying such a drastic curtailment of his liberty."

Leggatt was in the minority. The other four judges upheld the move.

The UK government singled out Shvidler, who holds dual British-US nationality, not because he was close to Putin, but because of his ties to Abramovich, who does or did have links with the Russian leader.

Lawyers for Shvidler, who has five children, all British citizens, argued that the effects of blacklisting him and his family were "manifestly disproportionate". After he was cited, Marlborough College did not allow his daughter to return for the rest of the academic year and Harrow School withdrew his son’s place.

Nevertheless, the four decreed: "Whilst Mr Shvidler cannot be expected to place himself and his family in physical danger, he could take further steps to pressure those with whom he is involved to encourage President Putin to cease destabilising Ukraine, or distance themselves from President Putin."

Eugene Shvidler was sanctioned by the UK government due to his ties to Roman Abramovich. PA

That drew a quick response from across the professional spectrum, with the judges accused of unworldliness and a lack of understanding of the influence that Shvidler – or indeed any businessman – would have on Putin or those around him. Lawyers rarely put their heads above the parapet, but Fabian Barth, a Dusseldorf solicitor, felt compelled to write: "It is therefore worrying that the UK Supreme Court has just given the government the right to employ the sanctions regime against individual rights based on what Lord George Leggatt, in a dissenting judgment, rightly describes as 'flimsy reasons' … in a nutshell, the government argued that an individual can be deprived of all their money and other assets indefinitely because there is some faint hope they might, fingers crossed, have some influence on the actions of the Russian regime (not that there was any evidence to that effect whatsoever)."

Shvidler said: "This Supreme Court judgment brings me back to the USSR, which I left as a stateless refugee 36 years ago, seeking sanctuary in the US. Back then, individuals could be stripped of their rights with little or no protections and that is how I feel about this judgment."

He added that official decisions about whom to penalise are "often not about targeting those who really have supported and benefited from the Russian state, but more about cheap virtue-signalling".

Shvidler is one of a list of cases where sanctions have been applied in seemingly the weakest of circumstances. They include:

• In March 2022, Formula One driver Nikita Mazepin and his father Dmitry were sanctioned by the EU, UK and Canada following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Italian authorities seized their $114 million Sardinian property. After being dropped by F1, Mazepin founded We Compete as One to advocate for athletes excluded due to political decisions. In 2023, he challenged the sanctions in court to revive his motor-racing career. A UK court denied his appeal but the EU allowed him limited travel for motorsport purposes. In March 2024, the EU fully raised the bar against him.
• Alexander Pumpyanskiy, a Swiss citizen sanctioned by the EU in September 2022 solely due to being the son of Dmitry Pumpyanskiy, founder of Russian industrial giant TMK. He had long since resigned from corporate boards and lived in Switzerland. In November 2023, a court ruled the blocks unlawful and annulled them. Still, the EU relisted him in March 2024 on the same grounds (his family connection), effectively ignoring judicial review and penalising him for his parentage without showing any personal wrongdoing.
• Serial entrepreneur and banker, Oleg Tinkov vocally condemned the Russian attack on Ukraine, sold his bank and renounced his Russian citizenship soon afterwards. Even so, he was blacklisted by the UK. The sanctions were removed days after Sir Richard Branson interceded.
• Azerbaijani-Russian businessman, Farkhad Akhmedov, similarly moved assets and distanced himself from the Kremlin after the invasion but remained under sanctions until they were recently lifted in court.

Nikita Mazepin, of Russia, had limited success challenging the sanctions placed on him by the EU, UK and Canada. Getty Images

At the same time, various entities that are wholly or majority-owned by sanctioned entities go unpunished. Agroholding Steppe and Trading Steppe, two Russian trading firms majority-owned by designated Russian conglomerate AFK Sistema, remain free to trade commodities and go about their business.

In a report last year, Dean Armstrong KC, a specialist lawyer in international sanctions, concluded they are frequently levied without due process, and fail to constrain the intended target. Instead, he said, sanctions have had a "dire effect" on "innocent" British and EU citizens and their families, who have no chance to argue their case and simply face unilateral punishment, which takes years to undo.

The wider impact, including, for instance, relating to compliance for financial counterparties, is much more permanent. Sanctions are, Anderson wrote, "largely arbitrary". He went on: "The standard of proof required is well below the criminal standard, which is concerning given the effect of the penal sanctions imposed. Thus, UK sanctions effectively act as a form of quasi-criminal liability without due process." Anderson criticised "the unlawful, politically motivated and arbitrary nature of the UK sanctions regime".

In a paper, Lord Robert Skidelsky, the economic historian and chairman of the Centre for Global Studies, has described the use of sanctions as "a weapon out of control".

Governments, he said, should "never be trigger-happy with economic sanctions. They have uncontrollable consequences. They should come into play only after diplomacy has been exhausted, never as an alternative to it. This has not been the case in the present [Russia-Ukraine] conflict."

Skidelsky concluded: "Economic sanctions should exclude the 'guilt by association' fallacy – that of assuming that those who do business with sanctioned entities share their aims. Only those 'controlled by' the sanctioned entity should themselves be sanctioned. Extraterritorial sanctions against individuals and entities on grounds of 'reasonable suspicion' of their 'association' with sanctioned states or sub-states are particularly egregious, because they can destroy thousands of businesses and livelihoods on the whim of governments."

Too often, designations are levied with the flimsiest of evidence on parties that have no influence on or benefit from the war or the Russian regime, with sanctions only serving to curtail individual freedom with no strategic gain – or worse, damaging the cause of allies of Ukraine by driving people and money back into Putin’s arms.

In breaking ranks in the manner he did, Lord Leggatt’s name can be added to those who support that view.