LONDON (CU)_Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late-February, several major economies, including the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union have launched sanctions against Russian officials, companies and businessmen. The moves are aimed at crippling Russia’s economy in response to Moscow’s growing aggression against its neighbour and several Russian oligarchs, including the owner of the Chelsea football club, Roman Abramovich, have been targeted by these measures.
Following the United Kingdom’s decision to impose sanctions against the Russian billionaire, the steel manufacturing and mining firm Evraz plc, has attempted to distance itself from Abramovich, who owns a 29 per cent stake in the company. Now the company itself has been sanctioned by the British government, making it the first former FTSE 100 member to be subjected to sanctions. Evraz “operates in sectors of strategic significance to the government of Russia,” the Foreign Office said, adding that the action would “further chip away at Putin’s financial reserves and siege economy, and support Ukraine’s continued resistance”.
The firm, which conducts vast mining and steelmaking operations in Russia, with over 70,000 employees, maintains a registered office is in London’s Mayfair district. In March this year, Evraz shares were suspended from trading on the London Stock Exchange owing to its alleged strategic significance to Moscow when imposing sanctions on Abramovich. In the Russian oligarch’s sanction designation, the government claimed the multinational mining company was “potentially supplying steel to the Russian military which may have been used in the production of tanks”. However, these allegations, which have been vehemently denied by Evraz, were not included in the company’s recent sanctions designation.
The sanctions may have come as a surprise to Evraz, which said in March that it does not expect such measures against the company itself, since Abramovich did not have “effective control” over it, and went on to insist that it provided steel only to the “infrastructure and construction sectors”.
