Top Russian oligarch Abramovich loses third EU lawsuit, as Brussels plans tougher blacklist

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has lost a third sanctions case at the EU courts, in what may embolden Europe to go after other high-value Russian taxpayers in October. The General Court rejected his challenge on a technical issue and on grounds the EU Council was right to target “sectors which generate significant revenues for the Russian government”. On the procedural side, Abramovich’s small army of EU lawyers had contended that only the “EU Council” (a meeting of 27 ministers) had the legal right to impose sanctions, but claimed that blacklist decisions had de facto been made by the council’s lower-level “working groups”. They also claimed he was unfairly targeted because the EU wanted “to exploit him on account of his public notoriety”. Abramovich used to own Chelsea Football Club in the UK and over €300m of luxury real estate in France and Portugal before he was listed in 2022. His lawyers on Wednesday came from Belgian firms Daldewolf and CMS, French companies Bastien and Bonifassi, and also included Irish barrister Carsten Zatschler. Daldewolf said it was not authorised to comment on the ruling. But the court said it would be manifestly impossible for the 27 foreign ministers to personally scrutinise each listing proposal at their meetings, instead of relying on "preparatory work", with over 3,000 Russian individuals and entities listed already. In defending the EU listing criteria, judges said these were aimed at changing offenders' behaviour, but Abramovich had "failed to propose" any meaningful change to his Russian business empire over the past four and a half years of the full-blown Ukraine war. He "failed to establish that it was impossible to sell his shares" in a leading Russian metals company, for instance. By contrast, Russian tech billionaire Arkady Volozh, who lived outside Russia, sold off most of his Russian businesses and called the Ukraine war "barbaric" in 2023, before the EU delisted him in 2024. But Abramovich lives in a luxury complex outside Moscow, is still a majority shareholder of Russian steel and mining giant Evraz, and a shareholder in the strategic Norilsk Nickel metals firm, the court said.