The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed measures against eight entities and people it said were providing support to Gennady Timchenko, a prominent gas trader previously sanctioned.
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“Their banking activity with clients is not mentioned though, so it will have no direct impact on the commercial transactions of American and Russian companies working with the blacklisted banks”, Derek Norberg noted.
The measures are meant to compel Russia to comply with peacekeeping commitments signed this year in Minsk that would end fighting in eastern Ukraine, in which pro-Russian separatists are battling Ukrainian forces.
Officials said the step is intended to maintain the effectiveness of existing sanctions, not to expand the penalties in response to any escalation in the Ukraine crisis.
Another target of the new US sanctions was Roman Rotenberg, the son of the Russian businessman Boris Rotenberg and the member of the Kontinental Hockey League Executive board. The fresh US sanctions come after the European Union and Canada recently stepped up pressure on Russian Federation to ensure that the country fully implement peace accords reached in Minsk in February but regularly violated.
The four officials, who are already on the EU sanctions list, include: Andriy Petrovych Klyuyev, Sergey Vitalievich Kurchenko, Eduard Anatoliyovych Stavytsky, and the son of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Oleksandr Viktorovych Yanukovych.
Adding of two managers of the company to the sanctions list “also caused astonishment and resentment, as these two people are responsible for selling only civilian industry products”, the spokesperson added.
On Thursday the US Treasury Department added to its black list several individuals and companies from Russian Federation and other countries which it believes are trying to do business with Crimea in circumvention of the US-imposed sanctions.
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Four former officials in the Yanokovych regime were sanctioned as well as five port operators in Crimea and one sea ferry operator because they operate in that region.
