Deripaska lost US lawsuit to lift sanctions against him

The COURT rejected the arguments of the defense that the inclusion in the sanctions list was voluntaristic, and did not agree,that Deripaska's rights were violated during the consideration of the case Oleg Deripaska

The court denied the Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska in a lawsuit demanding the lifting of US Treasury sanctions imposed against him , according to the decision of the federal district court for the District of Columbia.

The judge granted the petition of the defendants represented by the US Treasury and closed the case. The decision can be appealed to a higher court.

The judge rejected the arguments of Deripaska's lawyers, who called his inclusion in the list of sanctions voluntaristic. According to the defense, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury exceeded its authority by including it in the list of sanctions, but the court did not agree with this.

The businessman's lawyers also called the refusal of the Ministry of Finance in a petition demanding to lift the sanctions voluntaristic for various reasons, none of which the court agreed with. In addition, the court rejected the claims of Deripaska's lawyers that his rights to due process were violated, because he was not provided with an insufficiently detailed description of the reasons for imposing sanctions with additional gaps where there was classified information.

The United States included Deripaska and related companies — UC Rusal, En+, Eurosibenergo — in the sanctions list in April 2018 on two formal grounds: the businessman allegedly acted “on behalf of / in the interests” of high-ranking officials of the Russian Federation (in particular, in 2005 bought an aluminum smelter in Montenegro “on behalf of President Vladimir Putin”) and “works in the energy sector” of RUSSIA (he owned control of the electricity company EuroSibEnergo). Both grounds are contained in the decrees of former US President Barack Obama: the first - in decree No. 13661, the second - in decree No. 13662. The documents were signed in March 2014 in response to the aggravation of the situation in Ukraine.

Deripaska proposed a way to double Russia's GDP in 10 years Economics

By December 2018, En+, UC Rusal and EuroSibEnergo managed to reach an agreement with the US authorities to lift the sanctions. The main condition was the reduction of Deripaska's share in En +, as a result, it fell from almost 70 to less than 45%. The businessman himself, as well as the GAZ group, which he controls through the Russian Machines holding, remained on the list.

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In March 2019, Deripaska sued the US Treasury and its then HEAD, Steven Mnuchin. The businessman claimed that the restrictions were imposed against him unfairly and illegally, as a result of which they caused him damage in the amount of $ 7.5 billion.

In March last year, the US Treasury declassified some of the materials that became the basis for the imposition of sanctions. Among the reasons were, in particular, the participation of a businessman in investment projects in Sochi before the Olympics and the financing of a number of projects at the request of Putin and other high-ranking officials. Deripaska called it "another portion of nonsense."

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