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Yevgeny Prigozhin: Government announces new sanctions rules after openDemocracy investigation [1]

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Date: 2023-04

The UK government is tightening its sanctions regime after openDemocracy revealed that it waived its own rules to allow a Russian warlord to sue a British journalist.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose mercenary Wagner army has been responsible for much of the bloodshed in Ukraine, was sanctioned by the UK in 2020 over Wagner’s activities in Africa.

Sanctions are supposed to restrict travel and all business with the individual targeted.

But in January openDemocracy revealed that Prigozhin had still been able to obtain special licences from the government to sue journalist Eliot Higgins of investigative website Bellingcat, who had exposed his crimes, for libel.

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Prigozhin even secured permission, through a little-known Treasury department called the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), to pay his London lawyers directly and fly them business class to St Petersburg to consult face-to-face.

The case provoked a political storm and led Exchequer secretary James Cartlidge to promise an “internal review” of the licensing process.

Today, in a written statement to Parliament, Cartlidge outlined changes made as a result of that review. These will mean libel and similar cases will no longer be presumed eligible for licences granted to lawyers working for sanctioned individuals.

Cartlidge told Parliament that “OFSI will, in future, take a presumption that legal fees relating to defamation and similar cases will be rejected”.

The change, preventing sanctioned individuals from bringing defamation and similar cases in the UK, will also apply to a new ‘General Licence’. The licence has removed the need for lawyers working for sanctioned Russian and Belarussian individuals to seek permission for each new piece of work for an existing client.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/government-new-sanctions-rules-yevgeny-prigozhin-stop-libel-russia-warlord-sue-eliot-higgins-journalist/

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