World
Oligarchs Got Richer Despite Sanctions. Will This Time Be Different?

The primary time the USA authorities slapped his household with sanctions and locked him out of the American monetary system, Arkady Rotenberg waited about eight weeks, investigators say, earlier than shopping for a $7.5 million portray in New York Metropolis.
That was in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, and since then the sanctions have hardly slowed down Mr. Rotenberg, a lifelong pal and former judo associate of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. His estimated value sits at about $3 billion, and his brother, Boris, grew to become a billionaire after sanctions had been imposed on him. Investigators have tracked not less than $91 million passing into the American economic system from accounts linked to the Rotenberg household.
Right this moment, as Mr. Putin’s troopers lay siege to neighboring Ukraine, world leaders have responded by strangling the Russian economic system. Main Russian banks have been lower off from the worldwide monetary system, the federal government faces default, and lots of multinationals are closing their Russian operations.
And a brand new raft of European and American sanctions has been introduced, in opposition to Mr. Putin himself, in addition to these thought of near him, together with Boris Rotenberg and Arkady Rotenberg’s son, Igor. The logic now is similar because it was in 2014: Squeeze Mr. Putin’s allies to place stress on him.
“We’re coming in your ill-begotten good points,” President Biden mentioned in his State of the Union deal with.
However regardless of such boasts, coming at what some analysts name a watershed second, the query is whether or not the West could make its sanctions chunk after largely failing to take action previously. Arkady Rotenberg is only one instance of the previous ineffectiveness of measures described because the “monetary dying penalty.”
A New York Occasions evaluation of worldwide company filings recognized almost 200 corporations related to the Rotenbergs, unfold throughout three continents and a dozen nations. Most of the companies at the moment are inactive, however even after Mr. Rotenberg was positioned on sanctions lists in 2014, he was in a position to take a stake in not less than seven corporations in European offshore tax havens.
As just lately as 2020, Mr. Rotenberg grew to become the helpful proprietor of two corporations — Robben Investments and Lucasnel S.A. — in Luxembourg, a tiny European Union nation referred to as a tax haven for shell corporations. Company data counsel Mr. Rotenberg nonetheless owns these corporations.
Mr. Rotenberg has stayed rich and spent lavishly as a result of governments hardly ever examine or attempt to untangle the fortunes of these they aim. As oligarchs employed high-priced accountants, legal professionals and different middlemen to hide their property, governments largely left it to banks and corporations to determine for themselves whether or not they had been doing enterprise with individuals on the blacklists.
Authorities investigators ignored studies of suspicious banking exercise. European leaders promised to deliver transparency to the monetary system however dragged their ft in doing it. Congress voted to present the Treasury Division the authority to crack open shell corporations however left that energy unfunded for years. And Britain appeared the opposite approach because it grew to become a playground and protected haven for Russia’s wealthy and highly effective.
“The overall view of illicit finance has been a deep sense of being under-concerned,” mentioned Phil Mason, who served as a senior adviser to the British authorities on worldwide corruption for almost 20 years. He mentioned lawmakers noticed Russian cash as a supply of jobs and investments.
“There was a whole blind spot as to seeing it as an issue,” mentioned Mr. Mason. “Within the absence of the Ukraine disaster, it’s nonetheless the prevailing angle inside authorities.”
However simply as 9/11 pressured world leaders to get severe about terrorist cash, present and former authorities officers in the USA and Europe say the latest invasion of Ukraine may very well be a turning level on tackling illicit Russian wealth. The broad strikes have already been with out precedent — freezing property of Russia’s central financial institution and banning Russian oil imports to the USA. A authorities spokesman mentioned Britain was taking sturdy motion and was “absolutely aligned with our allies and companions.”
And the efforts towards oligarchs even have been extra widespread and coordinated. The European Union and the USA led the cost, however had been adopted by Britain, which had been extra reluctant previously. Australia, Japan, Canada and others joined, shrinking the world marketplace for Russian wealth. Even secretive Switzerland mentioned it will freeze Russian property.
The USA Justice Division and Britain’s Nationwide Crime Company, for example, each just lately introduced job forces for tracing Russian property and implementing sanctions.
“The oligarchs are essential as a result of they’re those who would set off a palace coup if it ever occurred,” mentioned Tom Keatinge, a monetary crime knowledgeable on the Royal United Providers Institute, a British analysis physique. “And we all know that Putin depends on individuals near him to cover his cash.”
Disguise a Russian Fortune
There isn’t any secret to how Russian oligarchs like Mr. Rotenberg have hidden their cash. A U.S. Senate investigative report, launched in 2020, discovered cash pinballing throughout the globe: an organization in Belize was doing enterprise in London with a majority shareholder residing in Cyprus and a checking account in Estonia, to quote one instance from the report.
It’s a sample that investigators say is widespread.
First, a trusted lawyer or different agent units up a shell firm in an offshore jurisdiction with little transparency. On paper, the corporate has its personal director. However actually, any person else calls the pictures.
This firm can personal different shell corporations, making it even tougher to establish what investigators name the “final helpful proprietor.” These corporations can then have financial institution accounts in jurisdictions which might be recognized for secrecy.
On this approach, the shell firm can switch cash or make purchases with out anybody figuring out the true proprietor. That is usually authorized.
“We’re speaking about individuals with limitless assets to maneuver cash and keep away from scrutiny,” mentioned David H. Laufman, a lawyer with Wiggin and Dana who used to run the Justice Division’s counterintelligence part.
To arrange this community, investigators discovered, the Rotenbergs turned to Mark Omelnitski, a Briton who was born in Moscow and specialised in establishing opaque networks of shell corporations. Senate investigators discovered an organization handbook displaying how, for as little as a thousand {dollars}, Mr. Omelnitski’s firm, the Markom Group, would set up offshore corporations for his purchasers.
“Corporations organized by Omelnitski and his group counsel that Markom could probably have created quite a few corporations for Russian oligarchs and shut acquaintances of Russian President, Vladimir Putin,” an inner investigation by the British financial institution Barclays concluded.
Barclays closed 198 financial institution accounts related to Mr. Omelnitski’s Markom Group in August 2017. However he nonetheless runs a community of British and offshore corporations. He isn’t recognized to have confronted sanctions or felony costs. Letters requesting remark went unanswered by Mr. Omelnitski, who deactivated his LinkedIn profile after being contacted by a Occasions reporter.
A present of E.U. assist. The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia headed to Kyiv to precise the European Union’s “unequivocal assist” and provide monetary assist to Ukraine. The go to was stored secret till the final minute as preventing rages across the Ukrainian capital.
Russia-Ukraine Struggle: Key Issues to Know
Till now, neither the USA nor British governments have prioritized going after oligarchs, partly as a result of unraveling their networks takes time, manpower and worldwide cooperation. Banks are required to alert the authorities once they spot suspicious exercise, however even once they do, authorities officers could be sluggish to behave. One senior Senate aide mentioned that Rotenberg investigators discovered numerous examples of banks submitting studies with the Division of Treasury, to no avail.
For years, governments resisted efforts to require better monetary transparency, whilst leaked paperwork just like the Panama Papers made clear how secrecy allowed illicit cash to maneuver.
The European Union, for instance, handed a regulation in 2018 that mentioned the general public ought to have entry to details about who owns European corporations, even these nested in shell corporations. 4 years later, after delays from 17 nations, no such registry exists.
Congress handed an identical transparency regulation in 2021. However till this week, lawmakers had not offered the $63 million to enact it. Treasury officers are engaged on rules now that will assist pierce the veil of secrecy round shell corporations.
A New Method?
Governments might have to vary legal guidelines to sort out the issue.
In the USA, the authorities have broad powers to grab property if they believe a criminal offense has been dedicated. Investigators warning, nevertheless, that they don’t look forward to finding many oligarch fortunes in American financial institution accounts, or Russian superyachts in American ports. The tougher job, they mentioned, can be figuring out transactions in actual time when the patrons have hid themselves behind shell corporations and overseas banks, a lot because the Rotenbergs did for years.
In France, the federal government is contemplating legal guidelines that will permit it to grab, not simply freeze, property belonging to blacklisted individuals. For now, the federal government can solely seize issues with proof of a criminal offense. (In a twist, nevertheless, France did seize the yacht of Igor Sechin, the pinnacle of the Russian state oil big Rosneft, earlier than it might go away port early this month. Fleeing sanctions, the federal government mentioned, would itself be a criminal offense.)
Equally, the British authorities introduced final week that it had seized a non-public jet suspected of being linked to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. However the authorities’s argument — that it might seize the jet beneath a ban on Russian-linked plane getting into Britain — has but to be examined. And the aircraft in query is registered not in Britain or Russia, however in Luxembourg.
The anti-corruption group Transparency Worldwide estimates that just about $2 billion value of British property is owned by Russians accused of monetary crime or linked to the Kremlin.
Britain has been sluggish over time to impose sanctions on these oligarchs. Some, just like the Rotenbergs, have lengthy been blacklisted by different nations and are solely now making the British checklist.
However London is shifting with newfound decisiveness. Greater than 5 years after it was proposed, Parliament just lately handed a regulation prohibiting individuals from hiding behind offshore corporations when shopping for property. And final week, the British authorities lastly hit Mr. Abramovich with sanctions greater than a decade after corruption allegations and proof of ties to the Kremlin first emerged. His soccer crew, Chelsea, was already on the market when his property had been frozen; lawmakers mentioned he was additionally in search of to promote his London actual property, which features a mansion in Kensington.
Court docket data from a divorce dispute present that Arkady Rotenberg owns a $35 million mansion in a village in Surrey, south of London, which was bought by way of a British Virgin Islands entity with the assistance of the regulation agency Hogan Lovells. His nephew, Roman Rotenberg, who can also be topic to U.S. sanctions, listed his deal with as a $4.3 million London townhouse owned by a Cypriot entity.
“Successive governments have chosen to not grapple with this difficulty,” mentioned Mr. Keatinge, the monetary crime knowledgeable.
However even with all of the adjustments, gaps stay. After the Senate report demonstrated how Arkady Rotenberg bought nice artwork in the USA, lawmakers like Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, tried to pressure artwork sellers to abide by the identical anti-secrecy necessities as banks.
Beneath heavy lobbying from public sale homes, lawmakers killed the thought and allowed artwork gross sales to stay nameless.
Fixed Méheut contributed reporting.

World
Trump’s Vision for Gaza Shifts Away From a Cease-Fire Deal

Barely a week ago, Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, waving placards thanking President Trump and his Middle East envoy for their role in helping secure an initial cease-fire deal in Gaza and getting some hostages freed.
Many of them were hoping that Mr. Trump would strong-arm Israel’s long-hesitant prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, into agreeing to negotiate an end to the war with Hamas and get the rest of the hostages released when the two leaders met in Washington on Tuesday.
Instead, they woke up to news of Mr. Trump’s fantastical idea of removing the population of roughly two million Gazans from the devastated enclave to make way for a glittering, American-owned Middle Eastern Riviera.
Far-fetched as Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza may be — the Arab world has roundly rejected it and any forcible removal of a population violates international law — it abruptly shifted attention away from the future of the cease-fire deal, whose initial, six-week phase is due to end in early March.
As Mr. Trump sketched out his grandiose plans for Gaza, he placed little public pressure on Mr. Netanyahu to proceed with talks via Qatari and Egyptian mediators to turn the temporary cease-fire into a permanent cessation of hostilities. That left Israel with a wide berth on how it might deal with Gaza next.
The talks, which were meant to start this week, are now up in the air. And Mr. Netanyahu will leave Washington with Mr. Trump’s endorsement of what far-right members of the Israeli government have effectively been calling for: the mass migration of Palestinians from Gaza.
That leaves the fate of the hostages still held by Hamas in question as the militant group assesses how to move forward and many Palestinians worrying about whether the war might resume again.
“On the one hand, we are very grateful for what Trump has been doing,” said Idit Ohel, whose son, Alon Ohel, 23, was kidnapped from a bomb shelter as he tried to flee a music festival during the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7, 2023, which started the war.
“Now,” Ms. Ohel said of Mr. Trump, “I don’t understand the implications of what he is saying or how this is going to bring my son home.”
Mr. Netanyahu, in an interview with Fox News late Wednesday, hailed Mr. Trump’s idea as “remarkable,” saying it should be “pursued,” drowning out any talk of the details of how to move cease-fire negotiations forward.
And on Thursday morning, Mr. Netanyahu’s loyal defense minister, Israel Katz, issued a statement saying he had instructed the Israeli military to prepare a plan to facilitate the exit of “any resident of Gaza who is interested to leave to any place in the world that agrees to accept them.”
The initial phase of the cease-fire deal took effect on Jan. 19 and provides for Hamas to release 33 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. About 79 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 35 of whom are presumed to be dead.
Talks were due to start on Monday — Day 16 of the deal — on a second phase, which is supposed to result in the rest of the living hostages being released and to usher in a permanent cessation of hostilities. That would mean a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Wording about the transition to the second phase had been left intentionally vague, since Israel and Hamas are holding out for mutually exclusive demands.
Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas no longer holds sway in Gaza and to resume fighting, if necessary. Hamas refuses to give up control or disarm.
In repeated statements in Washington, Mr. Netanyahu laid out his three priorities for Gaza, with the hostages only coming in second.
“In Gaza, Israel has three goals: Destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, secure the release of all our hostages and ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel,” he said.
Mr. Netanyahu could stand to lose his own grip on power, with the far-right flank of his governing coalition having threatened to quit if he ends the war in Gaza with Hamas still in control there.
As of Thursday, no Israeli delegation had yet set out to Doha, Qatar, for negotiations, according to two Israeli officials who were not authorized to discuss the sensitive issue publicly.
Mr. Trump also sounded less committal than he has in the past about the fate of the hostages and ending the war, saying it was unclear if the cease-fire would hold. But he spoke of “going to a Phase II” of the cease-fire and said he would like to get all the hostages out. “If we don’t, it will just make us somewhat more violent,” he said, possibly indicating U.S. backing for a resumption of the fighting.
In the Middle East, analysts were parsing what Mr. Trump’s tectonic diversion on the future of Gaza might mean in the more immediate term.
“I think what he did was throw the old checkers board off the table and replaced it with Monopoly,” said Kobi Michael, an expert in the Israel-Palestinian conflict at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “He didn’t just change the rules of the game but the game itself,” he said.
Both Israel and Hamas are likely to want to buy time — Hamas to rehabilitate itself and its forces after 15 grueling months of war and Mr. Netanyahu to keep his right-wing coalition together — and may try to extend the first phase of the deal, allowing for more hostage-for-prisoner exchanges.
Mr. Michael said Mr. Trump’s vision for a Gaza without Gazans could work as a threat and put significant pressure on Hamas to release more hostages. Conversely, he said, it could cause Hamas to walk away from the deal altogether.
“Mr. Trump is a businessman,” Mr. Michael said. “He takes risks.”
Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security, said that even the mere suggestion of relocating two million Gazans was likely to complicate the cease-fire negotiations by making Hamas more cautious, and to destabilize the entire Arab world.
Mr. Trump’s declaration, he said, was “The perfect recipe for recruiting more people to Hamas,” adding that Mr. Trump’s “new colonialism” had given Hamas “easy marketing tools.”
Many people believe Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza is not feasible, but regardless of the reality, Mr. Netanyahu has come out with no sign of being pressured by Mr. Trump, or of any daylight between them. His government is intact, for now.
An Israeli official who briefed Israeli political reporters in Washington after the Netanyahu-Trump meeting said it was now clear to Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition partners that bringing down his right-wing government with Mr. Trump as president would be irresponsible and foil “historic” opportunities in the coming years.
Relatives of the hostages warn that they do not have time.
“I live in daily fear,” said Alon Nimrodi, the father of Tamir Nimrodi, an Israeli soldier who is slated to be released only under a second phase of the deal.
Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza was not a bad one, Mr. Nimrodi said. “But this is not the time to talk about it,” he said. Plans for Gaza should wait till “after the hostages are out,” he said.
World
Netanyahu gifts Trump controversial item that helped turned tide in war against Hezbollah

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump an unusual gift during his most recent trip to Washington, D.C., this week — a gold-plated pager.
The present was a nod to the controversial mass attack believed to have been carried out by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency against Hezbollah Sept. 17, 2024, in which thousands of pagers, walkie-talkie-like devices and radios simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and Syria around 3:30 p.m.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office to Fox News Digital said, “The pager symbolizes the prime minister’s decision that led to a turning point in the war and marked the beginning of Hezbollah’s strategic collapse.
ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER ORDERS IDF TO PLAN FOR GAZANS TO LEAVE IN LINE WITH TRUMP’S CONTROVERSIAL PROPOSAL
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump a gold-plated pager during a visit to the White House Feb. 6, 2024. (Israeli Government Press Office)
“This strategic operation reflects Israel’s strength, technological superiority and tactical ingenuity in confronting its adversaries.”
An image obtained by Fox News Digital showed the pager mounted to a wooden plaque with a message on the device that said, “Press with both hands,” accompanied by a double downward arrow sign, the same message that reportedly showed moments before the devices detonated.
The plaque also came with a message to Trump calling him Israel’s “greatest friend and ally.”
The statement appears to be the first time Netanyahu’s office has publicly commented on the strike against the terrorist network in the summer.
Though the attacks were intended to target Hezbollah terrorists, the explosions also injured, maimed and killed civilians, including at least two children. In total, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that 32 people were killed and 3,250 others were injured.
ALLIES AND FOES REJECT TRUMP’S ‘RIVIERA’ PLANS FOR GAZA: ‘NEW SUFFERING AND NEW HATRED’

A symbolic portrait of a young Lebanese girl who was killed in a deadly pager attack is pictured next to flowers placed in front of the Lebanese embassy in northern Tehran, Iran, Sept. 18, 2024. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
U.N. Human Rights experts condemned the operation and said the indiscriminate nature of the attacks amounted to “war crimes.”
“These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time,” one expert told the OHCHR. “Such attacks require prompt, independent investigation to establish the truth and enable accountability for the crime of murder.”
Despite the limited number of terrorists killed in the widespread attacks, Israeli officials have championed the operation as a successful psychological blow to Hezbollah.
TRUMP’S GAZA ‘TAKEOVER’ RANKLES AMERICA FIRST CONSERVATIVES, ALLIES SUGGEST NEGOTIATOR-IN-CHIEF IS AT WORK
Though Israel was immediately suspected of being involved in the reported years-in-the-making operation, Jerusalem had not officially confirmed its role publicly before.
However, by November 2024, Israeli reports revealed comments leaked from a Cabinet meeting in which Netanyahu was quoted as saying, “The pager operation and the elimination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of senior officials in the defense establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon.”

President Donald Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 2025. (Avi Ohayon (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The prime minister’s comments were an apparent dig at former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who he fired just weeks prior to the comments over disagreements regarding the war effort against Hamas and Hezbollah.
Neither the White House nor the U.N. immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
World
Georgia’s EU membership by 2030 is achievable, PM Kobakhidze says

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told Euronews, in an exclusive interview, that Brussels needs to be more flexible in EU membership talks.
In his first interview after the South Caucasus country hit pause on its EU accession talks, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told Euronews that the ball was in Brussels’ court, and that the bloc needed to be more flexible in its approach to new members.
Kobakhidze said Georgia was facing “some significant challenges with the European bureaucracy” but emphasised that he was still “very optimistic” that his country would obtain EU membership by 2030.
“(We) will be consistent in following this goal and then hopeful that the approach to Georgia will be more fair in the next coming years,” he told Euronews.
In November, Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would pause discussions on its bid to join the EU until 2028 due to what the prime minister described then as “blackmail and manipulation” from some of the bloc’s politicians.
The EU gave Georgia candidate status in December 2023, but halted its membership application process indefinitely and cut financial support last June after the passage of a “foreign influence” law that the bloc considers to be Russian-inspired and authoritarian.
Kobakhidze told Euronews that Tbilisi’s policies were not to blame for the fact that there are currently not “healthy relations” between Georgia and the EU.
“It’s because of the European bureaucracy and the policies towards Georgia,” he said. “So, if that policy changes, everything will be in a better shape.”
Kobakhidze was reappointed in November as prime minister by the ruling Georgian Dream party, whose disputed victory in October’s parliamentary election has sparked massive demonstrations and led to an opposition boycott of parliament.
Opposition forces — including Georgia’s former president Salome Zourabichvili — have condemned the results as a “total falsification” of the vote. The European Parliament in November adopted a resolution condemning the vote and calling for new elections to be held under international supervision.
The ruling party, which has been in power since 2012, has denied any wrongdoing.
Realism with Russia relations
Meanwhile, protesters and critics have accused Georgian Dream — established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his fortune in Russia and is widely considered to be the country’s de facto leader — of turning away from the West and towards Moscow.
Kobakhidze told Euronews that Georgia had “no space for restoring diplomatic relations (with Russia) because of the occupation of our two historic regions”.
Moscow recognised the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states in 2008 after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a brief war. The two breakaway territories make up 20% of Georgia’s territory.
“This territorial integrity is recognised by the international community and of course we have to defend our national interests in this respect, but our vision is peaceful,” Kobakhidze said, adding that a “non-peaceful solution is absolutely impossible”.
“We would like to restore our territorial integrity — there’s no alternative — and we are hopeful at some point this will be realistic. Let’s see,” he said.
“But we run with a pragmatic policy and that’s the key content of our policy towards Russia,” Kobakhidze added. “We are keeping trade and economic relations with Russia and that’s how we are going to run it for now.”
When asked about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the prospect of a peace agreement, Kobakhidze said there was “no alternative” to a ceasefire.
Ukraine is “suffering a lot”, the prime minister said, citing the loss of life, damage to infrastructure and Russia’s occupation of large swathes of Ukrainian territory.
“The international community should be fully concentrated on promoting this ceasefire agreement and peace,” Kobakhidze said. “That’s the key for improving the overall situation in the region and the world.”
Watch the entire interview on Euronews’ The Europe Conversation this week.
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