A former Russian government minister who violated British sanctions by receiving significant financial support from family members was sentenced Friday to more than three years in prison.
Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, who was appointed governor of Sevastopol in Crimea by Russian President Vladimir Putin, became the first person convicted of violating the sanctions put in place after the illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
He set up a British bank account to illegally receive tens of thousands of pounds from his wife and accepted gifts and payments from his brother, prosecutors said.
Ovsiannikov, 48, was convicted on Wednesday in London’s Southwark Crown Court of six counts of circumventing sanctions between February 2023 and January 2024, and two counts of money laundering. He was sentenced to 40 months behind bars.
Ovsiannikov, who also served as deputy minister for industry and trade, was an important political figure placed under European Union sanctions in 2017 for work that threatened the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, prosecutors said.
The sanctions prevented him from depositing or withdrawing funds in EU countries. Although the EU sanctions were annulled by the Court of Justice of the EU in 2022, they remained in place in the UK under the Russian Regulations adopted in 2019 as it left the bloc.
