The European Court lifted sanctions against former Ozon CEO Alexander Shulgin

The European Court of General Jurisdiction in Luxembourg ruled to lift EU sanctions against former CEO of the Ozon marketplace Alexander Shulgin after he left his position. this RBC reports with reference to the text of the court decision issued today.

Restrictions against Shulgin were introduced on April 8, 2022. The European Union called him an “influential businessman” because of his post at Ozon, and also noted the Russian’s participation in a meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on February 24 last year - then the entrepreneurs discussed continuing to work under sanctions.

Just three days after the EU decision, Shulgin left his position and resigned from the board of directors. A clarification was added to the sanctions list due to the fact that the manager no longer heads the marketplace, but the note about his influence remained. According to the rationale, he is “involved in economic sectors that provide a significant source of revenue for the government” of Russia.

In court, Shulgin’s defense explained the groundlessness of the sanctions against the Russian by his lack of influence on the business after his dismissal from the company. The court believed that even without the post of general director in a large marketplace, a manager may not leave his position, but the Council of the European Union was unable to confirm these assumptions.

“The main issue for the court was precisely his managerial role as CEO of Ozon , and the fact that he left it obviously became the determining factor,” Yuri Shumilov, a partner at the Brussels law firm Acquis and a sanctions specialist, said in an interview with RBC.

He noted that thanks to Shulgin’s case, the concept of “influential businessman”, which is used by the European Union, was revealed. It means a person who is at the top of the ranking of entrepreneurs or runs a large company.

Previously, restrictions could only be lifted from relatives of businessmen. At the same time, the entrepreneurs themselves remained under sanctions. Also, the mechanism for lifting restrictions is still not reliably known. Thus, the co-founder of Yandex Arkady Volozh made his first anti-war statement in August. A few days after speaking about “Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine,” the businessman’s lawyers asked to lift the sanctions against him.