A court has been asked to seize funds of a Russian oligarch for the first time by the National Crime Agency(NCA), after the organisation claimed the £1.1million fortune is the ‘proceeds of crime’.
The OCCRP reported that Petr Aven, who reportedly has had ‘close links to President Putin since the 1990’s’, moved funds in violation of sanctions regulations.
Until 2022 Aven headed Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank, and in 2023 he was named the 659th richest person in the world, with a net worth of around $4.2 billion.
The NCA applied for a forfeiture order for £1.1million on May 1st on billionaire Aven after it was claimed he ‘had been supporting the Russian Government’ during the Ukraine war. The money has since been frozen after sanctions placed on the Russian oligarch in 2022 whilst the NCA gathered evidence that the money was garnered through criminal activity.
Alongside UK sanctions, the EU and US have also placed restrictions on Aven, due to concerns about his alleged political associations.
The OCCRP reported that Aven had won a partial legal victory in Europe in April when the EU Court of Justice ruled that there was not enough evidence to keep him on the sanctions list. However, sanctions remain firm, and Latvia, where Aven also holds citizenship, has appealed that ruling.
“Legislation does not allow for the forfeiture of sanctioned assets simply because the individual is sanctioned,” said Stuart Hadley, an NCA spokesperson. “Seizure of assets would only be practical where criminal activity can be linked to those assets.”
The application to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court is precedent-setting and a UK first, according to Helen Taylor, a senior legal researcher at the advocacy group Spotlight on Corruption.
“The NCA’s bid to move from temporarily freezing to permanently seizing these assets is the first attempt by U.K. authorities to chase down cash suspected to have been moved in violation of Russia sanctions,” she told OCCRP.
Aven declined to comment on the NCA’s application, and instead an email had been sent by his lawyer saying that he ‘does not consider it appropriate’ to comment on during legal proceedings.
“We are instructed that our client does not consider it appropriate to comment on the matters you raise while they remain the subject of on-going legal proceedings,” his lawyer, Thomas Cattee, said by email.
The NCA then began investigating the oligarch’s business and real estate interests in the U.K. Legal documents show that the agency questioned whether Aven’s wife, Ekaterina Kozina, was also holding money for him.
In May 2022, a UK judge approved the NCA’s request to freeze £1.5 million. The agency say they suspected the money belonged to Aven but was being held by Gater, and in companies linked to the two of them, as well as with Kozina.
After two years of investigation, the NCA has now petitioned the court to seize most of the funds.