WASHINGTON, March 25 The US Treasury Department said that the companies and individuals included in the sanctions list on Monday were involved in the trade of products prohibited for import into the Russian Federation or could help circumvent anti-Russian restrictions using cryptocurrencies.
18 companies from the Russian Federation, the UAE, Cyprus and Estonia and two Russians were subject to sanctions.
«Today, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions against 13 entities and two individuals for working in the financial services and technology sectors of the Russian Federation, including individuals who developed or offered services using virtual assets that made it possible to bypass US sanctions,” the press release said.
«»Five entities were sanctioned for being owned or controlled by sanctioned entities,» the Treasury Department added.
Some of the companies, according to American authorities, either contributed to the creation of services using blockchain technology and operated them, or provided cryptocurrency payments in the Russian financial sector. According to the Ministry of Finance, Distributed Registry Systems LLC is associated with VTB and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Lighthouse LLC with Sberbank and VTB, Atomize LLC with Rosbank and Sovcombank.
Sanctions against the companies of the Echelon group in the United States were explained by their alleged involvement in the trade of sanctioned technological products.