The US Department of the Treasury added the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) and co-owners of Alfa Group — bankers Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev to the sanctions list.
Entrepreneurs since February-March 2022 were already under EU and UK sanctions. Because of this, they left their positions in the leadership of Alfa-Bank and their investment company LetterOne.
In March 2023, it became known that they asked Russian public figures, including Alexei Navalny's associate Leonid Volkov, to sign a letter with a request to lift EU sanctions against the leaders of Alfa Group. The signatories, who acknowledged the authenticity of the text, said that they signed a personal letter for the court, where the bankers appealed against the restrictions, and not a collective letter to the EU authorities, which turned out to be published.
Representatives of Fridman, who was born in Lvov, and other co-owners of Alfa Group denied in the European court that they supported the war in Ukraine and benefited from it. At the same time, the Proekt publication found that Alfastrakhovanie insures the property of the Kalashnikov concern, and Alfa-Bank, until December 2022, provided loans to the Tula Cartridge Plant, co-owned by Igor Rotenberg.
< span class="mz-publish-context-cite__text">For the oligarchs and the court. What do we know about the letters of Russian public figures with a request to lift sanctions against Alfa Group bankers