How British Lords saved Deripaska from American sanctions

The press of America and the whole world commented on the amnesty, and American politicians from both parties call it the “false signal” of the Kremlin, as, however, the withdrawal of troops from Syria declared by Trump. At the same time, the US Ministry of Justice announced the imposition of sanctions against 18 Russian citizens and four companies. This is the “Federal News Agency”, which is associated with Evgeny Prigozhin, “Economics Today”, “Neva News” and Usarelly.com - a resource in English aimed at American voters (which “New” has already been talking about).

Sanctions

"For Deripaska"

Among the 15 GRU officers who have fallen on the list, the US Ministry of Justice separately identifies Viktor Boyarkin , related to Oleg Deripaska, a businessman from the sanctions list. Deripaska and Boyarkin, the Bulletin for the press of the American Ministry of Justice was noted, financed one of the political parties in Montenegro on the eve of the elections in this country in 2016.

"For interference in the US election"

Four companies are included in the general “Lakhta Project”, the purpose of which is to interfere with political and election processes in different countries of the world. Here is the replenishment in the list:

• Alexander Malkevich - head of the USA Really, member of the Public Chamber, last month was detained at Washington Airport, he was awarded a notification demanding to register the publication as a foreign agent;

• Elena Khusyainova - the American authorities call her the chief accountant of the Lakhta Project. In October, the US Ministry of Justice accused her of conspiracy in order to damage the political system of America and interference in the elections in 2016 and 2018;

• Nine GRU officers, according to Washington, related to reconnaissance divisions 26165 and 74455, are responsible, in particular, during the hacking of the servers of the National Committee of the Democratic Party, the correspondence of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. On July 13, he was charged with involvement in intervention in the presidential election:

• Viktor Nyksh , the commander of the 26165 GRU unit (all titles - according to March 2016);

• Boris Antonov , Major, who oversaw the operations related to the 2016 election;

• Ivan Ermakov , an officer who participated in hacker elections, as well as in hacking the database of the World Anti -Doping Agency (WADA) in 2016;

• Alexey Lukashev , senior lieutenant, who was engaged in the sending of misinforming spam messages on the eve of the elections;

• Nikolai Kozachek , Lieutenant Captain (??)-so in the documents of the US Ministry of Justice-developed and tracked the malware used by GRU to hack networks before the elections in the United States in 2016;

• Artem Malyshev , junior lieutenant, participated in elections and against WADA;

• Alexander Osadchuk , commander of the unit officer 74455 GRU;

• Alexey Potemkin , an officer who administered the computer infrastructure used to publish stolen documents on the Internet;

• Anatoly Kovalev , an officer, by July 2016, hacked the website of the State Election Commission, by August 2016 he hacked the computers of the American company supplying software to verify information about the registration of voters.

"For hacking the World Anti -Doping Agency and Kiberataku on the OPCO - the organization to prohibit chemical weapons"

• Alexey Moreene, Evgeny Serebryakov , GRU officers, participated, according to the American authorities, in both operations in 2016 and 2018;

• Oleg Sotnikov and Alexei Minin , military intelligence officers, collected hacker equipment to penetrate the OPCW computer network.

“For the attack using the nervous substance“ Novice ”

• “Ordinary civilians, we know them” - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, GRU officers, are responsible for trying to kill Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Under these names they take place in the official message of the American Ministry of Justice, but the journalists found out that in fact Boshirov is a colonel, Hero of Russia Anatoly Chepig, and Petrov is an employee of the GRU, military doctor, hero of Russia Alexander Mishkin. Under real surnames, these two appear in the documents of the US Treasury.

All property, as well as the “share of ownership” of persons from the sanctions list in the United States freeze, are forbidden to enter financial transactions with them.

Amnesty

The US Department of Finance, or rather, the Office of Foreign Asset control (OFAC), sent a notification of intention to abolish the sanctions imposed on the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska: En +, Rusal and Eurosibenergo to Congress. Transaction terms: a Russian entrepreneur reduces his share in the leading Holding EN + from about 70% to 44.95%. Deripaska cannot receive cash either for his stock package, or from future dividends from En+, Rusala and Eurosibenergo, he will remain under sanctions, and his assets in the United States will still be frozen. The composition of the Board of Directors EN+ and Rusala must be agreed with the US Treasury. Six members of the Council should be US or UK citizens. In Rusal, the head of the board of directors is changing, 8 out of 14 members of the Council should be independent of Deripaska. The General Director of Eurosibenergo will be obliged to monthly provide in OFAC confirmation that it does not operate on behalf of Deripaska or another person on the sanctions list, the US Treasury said.

According to the law “On Countering the opponents of America through sanctions”, which was adopted last year, Congress can block this step of the administration within 30 days. But the current convocation of legislators, completing its work on the Capitol Hill, is in timekeeping and is trying to solve more important issues, for example, Shatdown-a stop of the government due to underfunding. And the new convocation of the Congress according to the 2018 election will be at first occupied by organizational issues. In short, not to Deripaska. Therefore, just the intention of the Trump administration has already caused a real growth in the shares of companies on the exchange.

Justifying the amnesty of the Rusala, En+ and Eurosibenergo, the Finance Minister Stephen Mnuchin said that American sanctions were punished by the company "not for their behavior, but for owning them and controlled Deripaska."

That is, with the “departure” of the businessman it makes no sense to limit the activities of this three, they are completely rehabilitated.

Recall that on April 6, against 38 legal entities and individuals of Russia - officials and entrepreneurs - Washington imposed sanctions, as they say, “for everything at once”: events in the Crimea, in the east of Ukraine, for Syria, and the intervention of hackers in the American elections. Along with the six more oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska, then, lost $ 4 billion from this, from this, from this, as they say, from this.

However, the blow to the Rusal - the second largest aluminum company in the world - caused a shock in the world metals market. The White House and the Ministry of Finance did not calculate the consequences: the sanctions had an unintentional wave impact on companies in the United States, Ireland, Sweden, Yamike, Guinea and other countries with a potential loss of jobs and other negative economic consequences. Aluminum markets plunged into chaos, and world prices in two weeks jumped by 20 percent. “Rusal” turned out to be “too big to give it to fall,” recall the phrase of the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, when the US Treasury was forced to help large banks and automotive industry enterprises. And here 6 times the US Department of Finance extended licenses to Russian companies, despite sanctions; For 8 months, negotiations lasted to achieve the current agreement on the sanctions amnesty.

"Save Deripaska, getting rid of Deripaska"

The interests of the Russian oligarch were represented by a powerful team of lobbyists and lawyers, led by British Lord Gregori Barker, former Minister of Energy and Climate Changes in the government of David Cameron. Lords on Boards - “Lords in Management” (literally: “Lords on the boards”) - this is how this phenomenon is ironically called in the United Kingdom:

Representatives of aristocratic families work for Russian entrepreneurs whose origin raises many questions.

In the early 2000s, Lord Barker worked in Moscow as the head of the Sibneft, investors department of the Russian oil company, associated with two Russian oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, and now he is the chairman of the Board of Directors of EN+. However, in the past, Oleg Deripasku was also not such people: a former republican senator from Kansas, a presidential candidate and vice presidents of the United States Bob Douul, as well as the notorious Paul Manafort, who became the head of the headquarters of Donald Trump.

In Washington, Lord Barker hired a PR company Mercury Public Affars, according to New York Times, for $ 108,500 a month . The "Mercury" registered in the Ministry of Justice as "foreign agents", but working not on Deripaska (impossible due to sanctions), but for Lord Barker. Just a few weeks after the sanctions were announced, Brian Lanza, a former participant in Trump’s election campaign and an assistant to the “transition period” (as they call the transfer of authority between two presidential administrations), and now - a lobbyist from Mercury, contacted senior officials in the Ministry of Finance, the State Department and the White House.

Another lobbyist, a former Senator from Louisiana David Witter, headed the campaign to involve foreign ambassadors in Washington in the fight for the abolition of sanctions, trying to convince them that damaging Deripaska business will damage production in their own countries. Millions were spent on lobbyists.

In addition to Mercury, the Team of Lord Barker and Deripaska also turned to three influential law firms:

1. Latham & Watkins represented Lord Barker;

2. Dentons negotiated for Rusal;

3. STEPTOE & JOHNSON worked on EN+, the media reported with reference to people “familiar with the work of lobbyists”.

The American press calls the names - a whole list of middle -level officials with whom the lobbyists have made contact.

The “Barker plan” consisted precisely in “saving Deripaska, getting rid of Deripaska,” as David Rafley put it, a friend of the Lord, a member of the British parliament. I must say, the plan worked, although the US Ministry of Justice refuses to recognize the role of lobbyists in the “amnesty” of Rusal and two more companies.

A precedent is created

It is very important, the local media note, as in reality the transmission of the control package and other restructuring measures recorded in the agreement will be held. The leader of the Democrats in the Senate Chuck Shumer, who was joined by Sherrod Brown from the Banking Committee and Robert Menendes from the Committee on International Relations, said that the decision to remove sanctions from Russian companies “raises key issues to which the administration should give an answer, whether there will be enough structural and managerial changes so that Deripaska no longer controls them in reality ( due to culis.- A . * P. *) ".

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Barr, the Republican from North Carolina, and Democrat Mark Warner from Virginia, in a joint statement, said that the transaction "would require constant control." There are more eloquent opinions.

The Congressman from Texas Lloyd Doggett criticized the Trump administration for softness against Rusal and said that the step towards the abolition of sanctions is that it comes down to the fact that

The president “hid another big gift under the Christmas tree by Vladimir Putin” ( *In addition to leaving Syria. - *a. P. ).

The transaction, according to the legislator, only "encourages Putin to continue destabilizing activities in the world." David Merkel, a former White House official and the State Department in the administration of George Bush Jr., said that the abolition of sanctions was “sending an incorrect signal”. Noting that these actions were taken less than a month after Russia captured three small Ukrainian naval vessels and 23 sailors on the “common waterway”, Merkel noted that “time is chosen unsuccessfully, this will be considered a step backward against people close to the Russian president.”

A separate topic is the role in the Bank of VTB Bank, which was associated in the West with the construction project in Moscow, Trump’s Tower and is called the Putin’s manual bank, and the Swiss company Glencore, Oleg Deripaska’s long -term partner. The VTB Bank will acquire part of the lost shares of EN+. Glencore, which owns a small direct package of shares of the Russian oil company Rosneft, will “exchange shares” “Rusala” “Direct Lake of Participation in EN+,” the Glencore is said in the investigation for money laundering. It would be ridiculous if it weren’t so serious and would not have caused more and more suspicions that Putin and Trump are playing (with us) into a thimble, ”said Jed Shugerman, professor of law Judsweek.

The discussions around this transaction are inevitable, but one thing is undoubted: an important precedent is created. Other Russian oligarchs from the "sanctions list" may try to change the rules of the game. And Deripaska lobbyists write the American media, in no case are going to stop and will seek complete lifting sanctions from the client.

Washington