Only eight individuals have successfully been removed from the EU blacklist in the last two years, with most cases involving connections to influential figures and EU passports.
The EU imposed visa-bans and asset-freezes on 2,177 entities and individuals following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, leading to a surge in anti-EU litigation.
As of March, EU courts in Luxembourg had dealt with 115 cases related to Russia-war sanctions, up from 97 cases in November.
On 20 March, the EU overturned sanctions against Russian Formula One driver Nikita Mazepin, a decision welcomed by his legal team at Campa Avvocati.
Despite the ruling, Mazepin remains unable to enter Europe or conduct financial transactions there, with the EU Council having the option to appeal within a specific timeframe.
Two Russians, tech baron Aleksandr Shulgin and financier Sergey Mndoiants, have been delisted following EU court victories, while two others, Violetta Prighozina and Alexander Pumpyansky, remain on the list despite court decisions in their favor.
Anti-EU lawsuits can be costly, with fees reaching up to €500,000 and cases lasting around two years.
Out-of-court delistings
Six of the eight successful cases involved out-of-court decisions by the EU Council, raising questions about the criteria for delisting.
The individuals who were successfully removed from the list included Russian energy billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, ex-wife of an oligarch Olga Ayziman, banker Grigory Berezkin, oligarch-sister Saodat Narzieva, ex-tech boss Arkady Volozh, and Slovak pro-Kremlin biker-gang chief Jozef Hambálek.
When questioned about the reasons for delisting, the EU foreign service provided vague responses citing confidential deliberations within the Council.
Despite the secrecy, it is known that these individuals hired expensive European lawyers to represent them in their cases.
Although lobbying for Russian clients by European law firms was banned in 2022, lawyers were allowed to petition EU officials and diplomats in the administrative phase of litigation.
French lawyer William Julié from Wj Avocats suggested that delistings may occur if individuals no longer meet the original criteria for being listed and if their cases have legal weaknesses.
He also mentioned that distancing oneself from the Russian regime could play a role in successful delistings.
If you still had a Russian business, but you criticised the war, based on past jurisprudence of the [EU] court, that wouldn’t be enough,” Julié said.
Putin’s EU friends
Putting aside their cases’ legal or moral merits, several of the lucky ones also had friends in high places.
Hungary, led by Putin-friendly prime minister Viktor Orbán, had urged fellow EU states to delist Akhmedov in the Council’s internal talks, for instance, EU diplomats said.
Orbán had also defended Narzyieva’s family, diplomatic sources said.
Croatia quietly helped Berezkin last September, EUobserver’s contacts added, while the pro-Russian Slovak prime minister Robert Fico bragged on TV about getting his biker pal Hambálek delisted in March.
The Croatian foreign ministry maintained EU omertà, saying: “Member states are not in a position to comment on the Council’s deliberations, as these are subject to professional secrecy”.
Hungary’s foreign ministry never replies to this website.
But the delisting breakthroughs came even though Russia’s efforts to cultivate EU friends got harder after Europe imposed its lobbying crackdown.
The European Commission cleaned out Russia-linked firms from its Transparency Register of lobbyists eligible to meet EU officials in 2022 and 2023, a commission spokesman told EUobserver.
It also issued a pan-European interpretation of its anti-Russia lobbying rules.
“Under EU sanctions, EU operators (or non-EU operators when doing business in the EU) are prohibited from providing lobbying services to the Russian government or Russian entities. Lobbying activities for persons on an EU sanctions list are likewise prohibited”, the EU commission said.
“This prohibition applies to EU persons, on EU territory, or to business done in whole or in part in the EU,” it added.
Andreas Geiger, from the Alber & Geiger law firm in Belgium, said: “Lobbying work for sanctioned Russians is currently indeed not doable”.
“I don’t know of anyone who does it in Brussels”, he said.
But the EU fortress had back doors, Geiger indicated, such as letting blacklisted VIPs’ Russian lobbyists visit EU capitals on their behalf.
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“There’s no extraterritorial effect of EU sanctions,” said Geiger.
“What do you want to do to the Russian chap who flies in to Europe to lobby? Arrest him at the airport? Based on what? He’s not even on a sanctions list himself,” the German lawyer said.
And there were signs EU loopholes were being used.
One blacklisted Russian billionaire, Gennady Timchenko, for instance, has spent at least €14m on his (so far unsuccessful) anti-EU sanctions campaign, according to independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe.
Golden passports
In three of the six out-of-court delistings, the lucky ones also had EU passports, posing another question — does that improve your chances?
Berezkin had Croatian and Russian nationalities.
“We can confirm that Mr Berezkin obtained Croatian citizenship in 2007 in accordance with Article 12 of the Croatian Citizenship Act,” the foreign ministry in Zagreb said.
Article 12 says Croatian passports can be issued to a “foreigner whose acceptance to Croatian citizenship would be of interest to the Republic of Croatia” (because of a financial investment, for instance).
Hambálek is Slovak and Fico bragged of defending “our citizen”.
Volozh, along with hundreds of other Russians, bought a Maltese passport for about €1.1m in 2016. Cyprus used to sell passports for €2m.
And if European citizenship was useful, then at least four other blacklisted Russians were eligible for EU passports because they were born in Europe.
The most senior one was Anton Vaino, a Kremlin chief-of-staff, who was born in Estonia. The others were Czech, German, and Lithuanian.
But for Julié, the French lawyer, EU passports weren’t a silver bullet.
“EU nationality is a ground that has been raised in a number of applications for annulment, especially because freedom of movement is a fundamental right within the EU, but without success so far,” Julié said.
And on one hand, the Hambálek case was an outlier, because the pro-Putin biker, who had been blacklisted based on German intelligence that he armed and trained a paramilitary brigade in Slovakia, was a close friend of Fico, said Slovakia’s former defence minister Jaroslav Naď.
“Hambálek and Fico socialised together. Fico also loved bikes,” said Naď.
But on the other hand, the Slovak bromance still showed how EU politics skewed sanctions justice, Naď indicated.
“I’m quite sure Fico blackmailed the EU, saying something like: ‘If you want your €5bn for Ukraine, you’ll have to take Hambálek off your list’,” said Naď, referring to an EU deal on Ukraine funding in March.
“Nothing to do with successfully suing at the court of justice. But entirely political decisions, actively taken”, said Geiger, the German lawyer, speaking of EU Council delistings more broadly.
Change of heart?
Some EU machinations went beyond national interests into geopolitics.
“The first desired aim of the sanctions is to actually achieve change of behaviour [by Russian VIPs],” an EU diplomat said.
A Ukrainian source said: “The EU told us that it [delisting Russian ex-tech CEO Volozh] was an experiment — they’re trying to encourage a domino effect of similar actions among middle-sized [Russian] businessmen.
The idea is to create an alternative Russian elite”.
Volozh, who has left Russia, publicly denounced Putin last summer, prior to obtaining his EU relief. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is barbaric and I am categorically against it”, the ex-CEO of Russian tech firm Yandex said.
But Russians seen as traitors risked reprisals, amid recent attacks in Europe, such as the shooting of a Russian pilot in Spain in February after he switched sides to Ukraine.
Russian businessmen who made U-turns could “indeed” be at risk, said Robert Baer, a US writer on security affairs and a former CIA intelligence officer, “but they wouldn’t be high on the list, like former [Russian] spies [who had defected]”, he added.
Israel was the safest place to live for Russian exiles if they had Israeli dual-nationality, Baer said.
“Europe is out if you don’t have a private security detail. Maybe the United States, but also with a security detail,” he said.
And whether anti-EU cases cost €500,000 in lawyers’ fees, €13m in lobbying, or €2m for an EU passport — that was cheap compared to the potential price of a political deal, Baer indicated.
“It’s between $20m [€19m] and $30m a year: 16 guards at $200,000 each a year, but this doesn’t include their travel, lodging, and food,” he said.
And even then, Putin’s targets remained “gettable” in the West, Baer said.
Meanwhile, getting delisted still left a long tail of petty travel-and-banking irritants.
The member state holding the EU Council presidency was meant to de-flag you in the Schengen Information System (SIS), which governs free travel in Europe.
But SIS glitches meant ex-blacklisted Russians risked being turned back at EU airports.
“Sometimes it’s not so straightforward even if the travel ban is taken out of the SIS, because Schengen has no central control authority,” said Julié, the French attorney.
Delisted Russians also had to carry round copies of their EU notification letters to un-cancel themselves at Western banks.
The eight fortunate ones aside, 13 other Russians have been deleted from the EU blacklist because they died.
But death didn’t automatically give freedom from the EU’s legal tentacles, in times of deep mistrust.
Those deleted included a dead Russian naval captain (Anton Kuprin), a deceased lieutenant general (Oleg Tsokov), and the late ultranationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
But Russian mercenary boss Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last August, has stayed blacklisted for now, an EU official said, “based on an assessment that there is a risk that his assets — if released — would be used to support the war”.
“You never know if a guy like Prigozhin is really dead”, an EU diplomat said.
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