Opendemocracy: Great Britain helped Prigozhin to circumvent sanctions

The Treasury of Great Britain in 2021 helped the owner of the "PMC Wagner" Evgeny Prigozhin to get around the British sanctions introduced a year earlier, as well as file a lawsuit to the court against the founder of the Bellingcat investigative project Eliot Higgins, reports Opendemocracy, citing a leakage of electronic letters. The British treasury was then headed by the current Prime Minister of Great Britain Rishi Sunak.

In 2020, Great Britain imposed sanctions against Prigozhin to prevent British organizations from doing business with him. OD reports that a year later, the Office for the application of the financial sanctions of the British treasury issued several licenses to the British Law Firm, which allowed Prigozhin to get around the sanctions and sue Higgins.

The authors of the investigation also report that representatives of the treasury regularly advised Prigozhin's lawyers. So, sanctions forbade Prigozhin to come to London, but the British authorities allowed Discreet Law to meet Prigozhin’s lawyers in St. Petersburg. In particular, the treasury asked British lawyers whether they really spent more than 3.6 thousand pounds on a business class flight to St. Petersburg and vice versa.

The owner of the "PMC" was also allowed to pay him to British lawyers. In September 2021, Prigozhin transferred money from Sberbank to HSBC Bank in the UK, but HSBC, due to sanctions against the businessman, refused to transfer payment to NATWest, serving Discreet Law. A few weeks later, the HSBC "was convinced of the legality of payment" and transferred money to Prigozhin's lawyers.

Prigozhin filed a lawsuit against Eliot Higgins after the Bellingcat investigation on the shadow operations of the Wagner PMC. The case fell apart after the start of the war in Ukraine, since in March 2022 Discreet Law lawyers broke off cooperation with Prigozhin.

"This story exposes the incredible ease with which one of the most famous warriors in the world was able to use the legal system of Great Britain to achieve its goals, even being under sanctions," the authors of the investigation write.

Eliot Higgins, in turn, also accused the British treasury of "getting into a scheme aimed at undermining the very sanctions, for the regulation of which it is responsible." The British government and lawyers Discreet Law refused to comment on the leak.