![Alexander Shulgin, Chief Executive Officer at Russia's online retailer Ozon](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2023/09/07/TELEMMGLPICT000348312361_16941165018290_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
EU court rules to lift sanctions on founder of ‘Russia’s Amazon’
Decision may aid appeals from other sanctioned elites still fighting financial measures taken after invasion of Ukraine
![Alexander Shulgin, Chief Executive Officer at Russia's online retailer Ozon](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2023/09/07/TELEMMGLPICT000348312361_16941165018290_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
The European Union’s highest court has ruled to lift sanctions on Russia’s top technology executive, marking the first time it has revoked measures against a business figure penalised over the invasion of Ukraine.
Wednesday’s landmark ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) came almost a year and a half after Alexander Shulgin, the former chief executive of Russia’s e-commerce giant Ozon, was sanctioned by the EU over his alleged links to Vladimir Putin.
Mr Shulgin attended a meeting with Putin at the Kremlin on Feb 24 last year, the day the Russian leader ordered troops into Ukraine.
During the meeting, which was also attended by dozens of other business leaders, Putin tasked those gathered with keeping the Russian economy together.
Several participants later claimed they had been invited to the audience in Moscow weeks in advance, and were caught off guard by the outbreak of war.
Proximity to Putin ‘unsubstantiated’
Mr Shulgin argued in his appeal against the sanctions imposed on him that the Kremlin meeting alone was not sufficient evidence for being penalised.
The ECJ agreed, ruling that EU officials had failed to prove Mr Shulgin’s proximity to the Putin regime and “sufficiently concrete indications to substantiate the reason” for blacklisting him.
The European Council, which first imposed the measures, originally claimed that Mr Shulgin had paid significant taxes in Russia and was a “leading businessman”. His lawyers rejected those assertions as vague accusations that lacked supporting evidence.
Despite the ECJ’s decision, the sanctions against Mr Shulgin will not be lifted immediately. The European Council could appeal the decision, or impose new sanctions as early as next week, when the existing measures are due to expire.
Mr Shulgin, who resigned from his post at Ozon more than a month after the beginning of the invasion, is one of several high-profile Russian nationals to have contested sanctions imposed by the EU.
His case was considered on the same day that claims brought by seven other Russian tycoons were heard, including Dmitry Pumpyansky, the owner of a major pipeline-making company; Putin’s long-time friend Gennady Timchenko; Mikhail Gutseriev, a billionaire believed to have close links with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko; and Tigran Khudaverdyan, the former chief executive of Russian tech giant Yandex.
Their appeals were unsuccessful, however.
In the only other notable instance of sanctions against a Russian businessman being revoked since the invasion was launched, prominent businessman Oleg Tinkov was removed from the UK’s sanctions list last month after he made scathing remarks about the war in Ukraine and argued that he had been blacklisted in error.
That case did not involve a court ruling.
Analysts said the ECJ decision marked an important moment for Russia’s blacklisted elite as they persist with efforts to have sanctions lifted.
“It will now be a bit clearer to those sanctioned individuals what kind of arguments courts may take into account while passing on their decisions,” Alexandra Prokopenko, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin, told The Telegraph.
While Ukraine’s top officials have, for months, suggested that high-profile Russians would need to publicly denounce the Putin regime if they wanted sanctions to be scrapped, Wednesday’s ruling essentially showed that no such declaration was necessary.
The overwhelming majority of Russia’s business elite has remained silent over the invasion of Ukraine and where dissent has emerged, it has often been slow in coming.
“When they see they have no prospects in Russia, they might as well express their outrage,” Ms Prokopenko said.
“But if there’s a chance to make money back home, they prefer to lie low and keep mum.”
Meanwhile, claims that sanctions on individual businessmen would prove critical in grinding the Kremlin war effort to a halt have failed to ring true, said Maria Shagina, a senior research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Instead, Russia’s tycoons have proved either unwilling or simply unable to stop the invasion or topple Putin.
Waiting for the sanctions alone to lead to regime change is “wishful thinking,” Ms Shagina said on Thursday.
But individual sanctions are not entirely futile, either, she added.
The fact that dozens of members of the Russian elite are contesting such measures shows “they can still perform an important signalling and constraining function” and “the non-imposition would send a message of impunity and business as usual,” Ms Shagina said.