Lithuania is freezing more and more assets owned by companies and individuals linked to Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the EU over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to MP Mykolas Majauskas, the chairman of the parliamentary Committee on Budget and Finance (BFK), 11 companies and five individuals have been sanctioned in Lithuania since February 24. Lithuanian banks have frozen 3.224 million euros, 1.368 million US dollars, and 645,000 Russian roubles.
“The authorities continue to work intensively in cooperation with international partners to ensure that the sanctions are applied on the territory of Lithuania in a principled manner and to the full extent,” Majauskas told BNS.
According to him, the EU sanctions cover three Russian oligarchs with links to the military industry: Sergei Chemezov, head of Rostec; Alexei Mordashov, head of the steel and mining company Severstal, shareholder in Lenta and a shareholder in the TUI tour operator; and Andrei Melnychenko, a fertiliser and coal magnate.
Majauskas said he had no information on whether all the individuals and companies sanctioned in Lithuania were related to these oligarchs. He has also refrained from naming specific companies sanctioned in Lithuania.
Links to Lithuania
The specific links of Chemezov and Mordashov to Lithuanian companies are not clear.
Media reports have previously suggested that Avia Solutions Group, an aviation business owned by Gediminas Žiemelis, is cooperating with Chemezov's Rostec on the construction of an airport in Moscow.
Rostec includes Russia’s main arms manufacturer Kalashnikov, helicopter manufacturers and the United Aircraft Corporation. All of these companies were sanctioned as a result of the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Rostec’s assets were frozen by the United Kingdom.
The Lithuanian charter airline GetJet Airlines has already announced that it is ending cooperation with TUI Baltics, which is linked to the sanctioned Mordashov.
AIM Capital, a Cypriot company controlled by Melnichenko, owns 90 percent of the shares of the Swiss-registered EuroChem Group, which owns the phosphate fertiliser producer Lifosa, based in the central Lithuanian town of Kėdainiai. Lifosa’s bank accounts were frozen last week. The company claims that it can no longer meet its obligations and therefore needs state aid.
EuroChem Group announced on 10 March that Melnichenko had resigned from its board of directors as of 9 March, and that he was no longer the main beneficiary of the group. It did not specify how it was done.
The Lithuanian parliamentary Committee on Budget and Finance has already discussed how international sanctions are applied in Lithuania and acknowledged the need to strengthen the competences of sanctions enforcement specialists.
According to the open data platform Okredo, there may be more than 1,600 companies in Lithuania that are linked in one way or another to Russian businesspeople.
According to the Bank of Lithuania, there are currently no Russian-owned banks in the country, but there is one payment institution that is controlled by Russian nationals, who are also shareholders in several companies.
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