The American authorities announced Monday August 8 that they wanted to seize in Kazakhstan the Airbus A319 of the Russian oligarch and parliamentarian Andrei Skotch, targeted by American and European sanctions in the wake of Moscow's outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
US justice has obtained a "
warrant
" for the "
seizure
" of this private Airbus A319-100 belonging to Andrei Skotch, a member of the Duma accused of being "
linked to organized crime
" and subject to a battery of sanctions from Washington and Brussels.
The press release from the Ministry of Justice, the Federal Police (FBI) and the Ministry of Commerce, specifies that the plane has been in Kazakhstan since the beginning of March and evaluates the device at “
more than 90 million dollars
”.
Washington released a photo and aircraft registration.
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"
We will continue to use every legal tool at our disposal to enforce our anti-money laundering laws and prosecute those who seek to use the US financial system to violate and evade sanctions,
" the powerful Manhattan federal prosecutor said. Damian Williams.
Andrei Skotch has been accused since 2018 by the US Treasury of having "
long-standing links with Russian organized crime groups
".
"
Task force
"
US Justice Secretary Merrick Garland set up a legal and financial unit in March dedicated to prosecuting “
corrupt Russian oligarchs
”.
Called “
KleptoCapture
”, this “
task force
” has more than ten prosecutors, criminal lawyers and national security experts, as well as investigators from the FBI, tax and postal services.
The cell works from the Manhattan Courthouse in New York, the largest federal prosecutor's office in the United States.
The megalopolis on the East Coast, the world's financial lung, is also the haunt of many Russian businessmen, who notably control huge apartments around Central Park each worth tens of millions of dollars.
“
An oligarchy is defined as a form of government where a small group exercises control for its own selfish and corrupt interests.
Their members in Russia have long concealed their illegal activities using the US dollar
,” said FBI director Michael Driscoll.
At the end of June, the US Treasury and its allied governments (Germany, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union) - united within the Repo "
task force
" responsible for tracking down the heritage of Russian elites (yachts, planes, cars, real estate...) - had frozen more than 330 billion dollars of Russian assets since the start of the conflict in Ukraine at the end of February.
