How Russian businesses handled sanctions to boost economy
Sanctions were imposed on Russia as soon as an Ukraine conflict broke out and it impacted common citizens and industrialists alike. Russian citizens can no longer use Visa and Mastercard cards abroad. Industrial companies that had been supplying raw materials to neighboring Europe for years redirected their sales to China, India and rest of Asia.
Foreign assets of many Russian companies were blocked, including nearly half of Russia's gold and currency reserves, totaling $ 300 billion.
Personal sanctions were imposed on senior Russian leaders and businesses associated with state as well as private industrialists. The list also covered business managers including Andrey Guryev Jr., former CEO of PhosAgro, which supplied fertilizers to India; Dmitry Konov, former CEO of the petrochemical company SIBUR, which produces rubber in Jamnagar. As well as Alexander Shulgin, former CEO of the Russian online marketplace Ozon, an equivalent of India’s Flipkart.
Now, dozens of Russian businesses are challenging the EU's sanctions in court. In September 2023, Shulgin from Ozon was able to prove in an EU court that he was no longer an «influential businessman» after leaving his position as CEO. As a result, the European Union did not renew sanctions against him. In recent months, several other former top managers of Russian companies have been removed from the sanctions lists on similar grounds.
How, why, and on what basis sanctions against particular Russian businessmen were imposed remain unclear, according to persons familiar with the sanctions regime. They claimed sanctions may have been imposed on business figures for them to influence the Russian government to
