I. Introduction
Four years into Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the European Union (EU) is likewise four years into an extensive framework of restrictive measures against Russia. These measures target the Russian economy through trade bans, restrictions on access to the EU financial system, and actions to curb state-sponsored propaganda. They also target companies and individuals linked to Russia’s war efforts by restricting their access to funds and economic resources within the EU.
While there is no single formal legal taxonomy, restrictive measures are commonly described as ‘sectoral sanctions’ (broad economic measures) and ‘financial’ or ‘targeted sanctions’ (those directed at specific persons or entities). In EU law, being subject to a financial sanction means that all funds and economic resources owned, controlled, or even indirectly linked to a sanctioned person or entity are frozen, prohibiting both the sanctioned party and EU actors from accessing, transferring, or making such resources available.
The legal foundation for financial sanctions is Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014,Footnote 1 which governs asset freezes and travel bans against designated persons and entities. Article 3(1) enumerates 15 distinct legal criteria, from (a) through (n), and authorises asset freezes and travel bans,Footnote 2 under which the Council may designate individuals and entities, thereby triggering the immediate application of restrictive measures that exclude listed parties from legitimate economic and financial activity within the EU and effectively render them persona non grata in the economic sphere.
Given the severity and reputational impact of these measures, sanctioned individuals and entities frequently challenge their listings before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), seeking to annul the Council’s decision, regain access to their assets, and restore their legal and economic standing. Although the scope of the designation criteria is broad, litigation before the General Court has to dateFootnote 3 concentrated on three principal categories of designations:
1. individuals involved in actions or policies undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity;
2. leading businesspersons operating in sectors generating substantial revenue for the Russian state; and
3. individuals who support, benefit from, or are closely associated personally, economically, or professionally with the Russian government or other designated individuals (reflecting the cumulative rationale underlying points (a), (d), (f), and (g) of Article 3(1)).
The initial wave of litigation was examined by legal scholars between 2023 and 2024, although a substantial number of cases remained pending. Scholarship from that period primarily addressed questions of judicial protection in the field of targeted sanctions and offered first analytical insights into this developing body of jurisprudence.Footnote 4
This article examines how the CJEU has, through its jurisprudence on annulment actions under Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014, developed a coherent doctrinal framework governing targeted sanctions against Russia. Through its case law, the Court has progressively articulated principles governing accountability, evidentiary standards, and the temporal scope of the sanctions regime’s application, namely, how far back in time the Court may look and which past facts remain relevant to current designations.
Rather than providing a comprehensive account of the EU’s restrictive measures within the broader Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) framework, this article focuses on the judicial reasoning through which targeted sanctions litigation has evolved into a coherent body of EU law, translating abstract policy objectives into individualised legal accountability. The rationale for this focus is straightforward: while the political purposes and procedural mechanisms of sanctions are well documented, the doctrinal and evidentiary dimensions of the Court’s jurisprudence, through which abstract policy objectives are translated into individualised legal accountability, remain insufficiently examined. The broader significance of annulment litigation for the development of EU sanctions law is examined in Section II of this article.
Sanctions themselves operate as a political tool of immediate pressure, intended to constrain those sustaining Russia’s war effort or embedded within its politico-industrial-military complex. Yet, in practice, the Court’s review of designations exposes a paradox: while the objectives are contemporary and preventive, the evidentiary inquiry is often historical and reconstructive. To determine who continues to wield influence, the Court must often reach into the past, examining long-standing business ties, institutional and corporate roles, and networks of privilege that continue to shape Russia’s present power structure.
While existing scholarship on the CJEU’s Russian sanctions jurisprudence has primarily focused on procedural legality, judicial review standards, and the protection of fundamental rights,Footnote 5 the deeper layers of the Court’s reasoning, where doctrinal interpretation intersects with a socio-legal understanding of how power, wealth, and influence are structured in Russia, remain largely underexplored. Yet it is within this dimension that the Court’s reasoning acquires its broader significance: through its evidentiary reconstruction of Russia’s current economic and political order under Putin’s regime, the Court delineates the very anchors of present-day accountability.
This article proceeds as follows. Section II frames the problem by situating annulment litigation within the broader system of EU judicial review and explaining how individual challenges to listings under Regulation 269/2014 contribute to doctrinal development. Section III sets out the research methodology and specifies research questions that guided this analysis. Section IV examines the Court’s approach to evidentiary thresholds, including the requirement of a ‘sufficiently solid factual basis’,Footnote 6 its review of alleged errors of assessment, and its treatment of open-source and classified material under Article 105 of the General Court’s Rules of Procedure (GC).Footnote 7 Section V turns to the substantive dimensions of accountability, presenting a taxonomy of Russian oligarchs as it emerges from the case law and analysing how the Court relates past trajectories to present influence and benefit. Within Section V, subsections H through L explore specific clusters of reasoning: minority shareholding (H), majority shareholding (I), economic transactions (J), outlier clusters (K), and executive functions and liability (L). Section VI extends the analysis to the ‘next generation’ of Russian elites, designated mainly under the association criteria (d) and (g). Section VII synthesises these findings and reflects on the emergence and limits of a coherent doctrinal framework of EU sanctions law.
A. Framing the problem: from annulment litigation to preliminary rulings—the search for coherence in EU sanctions jurisprudence
Why should anyone beyond the litigating lawyers care about challenges brought by sanctioned Russians? What practical relevance do these judgments hold for European businesses, regulators, and national authorities? At first sight, annulment cases appear to offer limited guidance to such audiences, since they revolve around personal circumstances of applicants.
This view, however, overlooks the jurisprudential depth of annulment litigation and the centrality of evidentiary review, through which the Court examines whether the past, including the post-Soviet past, retains legal relevance for present-day liability. Nearly all applicants had formally divested from their shareholdings, executive positions, or political roles shortly before designation, compelling the Court to assess whether such distancing was genuine or merely strategic. In association-based designations, this inquiry extends further: the Court must determine whether a causal link persists between the sanctioned individual and any benefits or shared economic interests derived by the associated person.
For the first time, the CJEU is compelled to confront the Soviet legacy not as a distant historical backdrop but as a normative framework shaping present accountability. Even when assessing the legality of designations involving minority or majority shareholders, the Court does not confine its analysis to the applicant’s current formal status. It consistently examines whether there exists a trajectory of continued influence or benefit linking the applicant’s past corporate role or shareholding to present-day economic or political alignment with the Russian regime. In so doing, the Court is quietly inaugurating a new doctrinal phase of EU sanctions law, one that entails a cautious, yet unavoidable reckoning with the continuity between Russia’s Soviet past and its current political economy of power. This litigation, therefore, cannot be reduced to technical disputes over evidentiary thresholds; it forms part of a deeper process through which the Court delineates the legal boundaries of Europe’s sanctions order in response to Russian state aggression.
This jurisprudential shift becomes visible in the recurring elements of the Court’s reasoning. Across annulment cases, the Court examines historical continuities that frame contemporary liability; the configuration of minority and majority shareholdings as sources of economic influence; the role of managerial and executive functions as loci of authority beyond formal ownership; and the use of trust arrangements as potential vehicles for sanctions evasion. These elements form a pattern through which the Court assesses whether applicants continue to wield influence or derive benefit relevant to designation under Regulation (EU) No 269/2014.
Taken together, these dimensions reveal that the Court’s jurisprudence does more than resolve individual disputes. Through its interpretive practice, the Court effectively maps Russia’s political economy, delineating the interdependence of corporate governance, state power, and private capital. In so doing, it exposes historical continuities linking Soviet-era privilege to post-Soviet oligarchic capitalism, thereby illuminating the normative foundations of contemporary accountability within EU sanctions law.
A central feature of this jurisprudence concerns the temporal scope of accountability. Although sanctions operate as instruments of present and preventive policy, the Court’s evidentiary inquiry is often historical and reconstructive. In assessing whether the Council has established a ‘sufficiently solid factual basis’,Footnote 8 the Court evaluates how past political roles, business activities, and personal or professional ties retain legal relevance for present-day designations.
Through this reconstructive process, the Court scrutinises how Soviet-era continuities and post-Soviet economic entanglements shape the current position and enrichment of applicants. In practice, this frequently involves examining individual trajectories during the 1990s transition—including participation in voucher privatisation and early state-capture networks—alongside present alignments within Kremlin-dominated sectors, in order to assess whether applicants qualify as leading businesspersons, supporters, beneficiaries, or associates of the Russian regime.
Sanctions jurisprudence is therefore more than a technical exercise in judicial review. It illuminates how Europe’s legal order interprets and responds to the historical structures that sustain Russia’s present regime, bridging law, history, and geopolitics. In this respect, the Court’s reasoning also exposes, and in part dismantles, the elite techniques of neutralisation, long theorised by Sykes and Matza,Footnote 9 through which complicity in aggression against Ukraine is reframed as legitimacy or self-preservation.
While many sanctioned individuals amassed their fortunes through the 1990s voucher privatisation, a formally lawful, yet profoundly distorted process, it was this very mechanism that transferred much of the Soviet economic apparatus into the hands of a narrow elite through opaque means. The resulting concentration of wealth created the oligarchic system that later fused with state power under Putin, a legacy long treated as a political fact rather than a legal or moral problem. Only in the wake of Russia’s full-scale aggression into Ukraine in 2022 has Europe begun to confront this continuity, realising how fortunes accumulated during the chaotic transition of the 1990s have become instruments of state influence, financing, and coercion. From this perspective, the emerging jurisprudence can be read as a form of retrospective justice by regulatory means, an attempt to translate a long-ignored moral and historical reckoning into a legal framework of accountability. In this sense, it is also of great value to historians and political scientists.
At the same time, the significance of annulment jurisprudence extends beyond its conceptual contribution. European Union market operators and national authorities rely on this case law by analogy when assessing whether assets must be frozen, drawing on the Court’s reasoning as persuasive guidance. Taken together with preliminary rulings, annulment judgments delineate the broader normative architecture of EU sanctions law, clarifying its evidentiary standards, temporal reach, and operational obligations for economic actors.
The EU sanctions regime consists of sectoral measures that restrict entire industries or categories of transactions, and targeted sanctions against specific individuals or legal entities. The latter directly affect named Russian persons and companies, obliging European market operators to freeze their assets and prohibit the provision of funds or economic resources.Footnote 10 Such restrictive measures may be contested in two main ways: through direct actions for annulment under Article 263 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)Footnote 11 (the so-called de-listing cases) or indirectly, via preliminary-ruling procedures under Article 267 TFEU.Footnote 12 As clarified in Rosneft,Footnote 13 national courts may refer questions concerning the validity or interpretation of restrictive measures to the Court of Justice, ensuring judicial oversight even within the CFSP framework.
These two procedural avenues perform distinct yet complementary functions. In annulment cases, individuals or entities bring actions seeking the annulment of their designation, typically arguing that they do not satisfy the substantive criteria for listing. The Court’s task is to determine whether those criteria are in fact satisfied, an inquiry that turns on the evidence produced by the Council to justify the designation. In preliminary rulings, by contrast, the Court of Justice interprets key legal concepts in the abstract, establishing binding principles applicable across all Member States. Yet such questions rarely yield general answers; their application remains inherently fact-specific, shaped by the circumstances of the national proceedings from which they arise.
In practice, the General Court’s role extends well beyond verifying evidentiary sufficiency.Footnote 14 Through de-listing litigation, it interprets and refines the very language of sanctions law, defining terms such as ‘benefit’, ‘association’, ‘control’, and ‘leading businessperson’. Its reasoning transforms contested facts into jurisprudential categories that guide not only future cases but also the day-to-day work of compliance officers, financial institutions, and national regulators.
The trust-structure cases offer a vivid example.Footnote 15 There, the Court clarified that a trust may constitute a sanctions-evasion mechanism if the Council demonstrates, through a sufficiently concrete and consistent body of evidence, that it was created to shield assets from restrictive measures. Although this principle emerged within the context of the ‘association’ criterion, it now informs how operators assess complex ownership and control structures across the sanction’s regime. In this way, case-specific determinations evolve into operational norms for the wider market.
Accordingly, when an EU operator or national authority evaluates whether a trust or corporate vehicle should be treated as a sanctions-evasion structure and assets should be frozen, its analysis must be anchored in this jurisprudence. Annulment cases provide concrete analogies and evidentiary thresholds; preliminary rulings provide interpretive scaffolding. Together, both types of judgment form a coherent system of guidance that enables market operators to make legally sound and defensible decisions on asset freezes.
Within this dual-track system of judicial review, two judgments serve as constitutional cornerstones: Rosneft Footnote 16 and Birių Krovinių Terminalas v Council and Commission.Footnote 17 In Rosneft, the Court of Justice closed a major gap in judicial protection by confirming that national courts may refer questions on the validity and interpretation of CFSP and sectoral sanctions, even where direct annulment actions are procedurally barred. This was crucial because Rosneft, though named in Annex IV of Regulation 833/2014,Footnote 18 was subject only to sectoral measures of general application and therefore lacked standing under Article 263(4) TFEU.
Birių Krovinių Terminalas refined this boundary, reaffirming that sectoral measures remain acts of general application that cannot be directly challenged unless the applicant is individually designated. Together, the two judgments define the dual system of judicial review that structures EU sanctions law:
1. direct annulment actions for individual listings; and
2. indirect review via preliminary rulings for sectoral or CFSP-based measures.
Within this architecture, annulment litigation plays a distinctive role. It defines the normative meaning of listing criteria, tests the evidentiary limits of Council discretion, and translates political sanctioning choices into justiciable legal standards.
Although annulment cases represent only one side of the system of judicial review, they reveal how EU sanctions law evolves from administrative restriction into a coherent and enforceable legal doctrine. Ultimately, the Court’s sanctions jurisprudence forces a broader reckoning: how Western legal systems confront the continuity between Russia’s historical structures of power and its present regime, and how law responds to the enduring nexus between past privilege and contemporary aggression. In this sense, EU sanctions litigation is not only doctrinally generative but normatively consequential for Europe’s political and moral order.
II. Methodology and research design
This article analyses how the Court delineates both the temporal and the structural dimensions of accountability within EU sanctions jurisprudence, tracing how the Court constructs continuity between past influence and present liability. It complements this substantive inquiry with a procedural examination of the ‘plea of error of assessment’, raised in nearly every sanction case. Analysis of this plea reveals how evidentiary reasoning operates as a driving force in the doctrinal evolution of EU sanctions law.
From this perspective, the analysis is guided by three interrelated research questions:
1. Substantive: Which segments of Russia’s political and economic elite does the EU seek to exclude from its legal and financial sphere, and on what historical and structural foundations?
2. Temporal: How far back does the Court allow the sanctions net to reach, and by what criteria does it determine when past conduct remains legally relevant to present accountability?
3. Procedural: How does the CJEU, through the plea of error of assessment, evaluate whether the Council’s allegations are sufficiently solid, verifiable, and substantiated to withstand judicial scrutiny?
Together, these questions situate the inquiry at the intersection of law, history, and political science, showing how sanctions annulment jurisprudence not only defines the boundaries of lawful designation but also, through evidentiary logic, reveals how Europe confronts the enduring entanglement of Russia’s political and economic power.
To answer these questions, this article employs a textual and doctrinal analysis of General Court judgments arising from individual (not corporate) challenges to restrictive measures adopted under Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014.Footnote 19 As at the time of writing, 47 cases have been adjudicated and systematically collected from the official CJEU database.Footnote 20 Each judgment was examined not in isolation but as part of a broader jurisprudential landscape showing how the Court constrains the Council’s discretion through evidentiary reasoning.
The analysis deliberately focuses on a single plea in law—error of assessment—as the primary analytical lens. This plea lies at the core of judicial review in sanctions cases because it tests whether the Council’s reasoning is supported by specific, precise, and consistent evidence. Concentrating on this plea enables a sharper view of how the Court applies the evidentiary standard of a ‘sufficiently solid factual basis’, bridging procedural guarantees with substantive scrutiny.
To move beyond case-specific reasoning, the study identifies cross-cutting principles concerning:
1. the temporal scope of designations;
2. the Court’s use of post-Soviet legacies as normative anchors for accountability; and
3. judicial inquiry into corporate governance under criterion (g).
Together, these dimensions show that sanctions jurisprudence now articulates a coherent doctrinal framework balancing historical legacies with contemporary geopolitical imperatives.
A coding framework of 11 discriminative legal variables was developed to capture how the Court applies the error-of-assessment standard across different factual contexts. The following variables were identified:
1. trust beneficiary without shareholding—access to capital or income streams without formal ownership rights;
2. passive trust beneficiary—receipt of economic benefits from a trust without managerial or ownership involvement;
3. association through personal relationships—familial, charitable, or joint-venture links with a designated person;
4. association through intermediary structures—connections established via trusts, shell companies, or layered entities that obscure ownership or control;
5. association through governance roles—participation in company management or oversight linked to sanctioned businesspersons, irrespective of ownership;
6. executive function without ownership—senior management or board responsibilities without shareholding;
7. corporate governance involvement without ownership—participation in boards or strategic decision-making without equity participation;
8. arm’s-length commercial transactions—contractual or business dealings with designated entities lacking structural or managerial ties;
9. majority or minority shareholding—controlling versus limited equity stakes used to infer degrees of influence;
10. legacy of past ownership or political/executive functions—prior business or political positions invoked to assess continuing influence or association;
11. Council reliance on classified evidence (Art. 105 of GC),Footnote 21 instances where the Council justified listings using confidential or partially disclosed material under Article 105 of the General Court’s Rules of Procedure.
Each variable was coded dichotomously (present/absent) for every individual case, based on the Court’s reasoning and factual findings. This enabled cross-case comparison and detection of recurring patterns in how the General Court applies the error-of-assessment standard.
Furthermore, two cross-cutting strands organised the analysis of cases. The first concerns the temporal scope of accountability, which asks how far back the EU’s sanctions net can legitimately reach. In this respect, the Court distinguishes between ‘living’ and ‘closed’ pasts: Soviet or early-transition trajectories acquire legal relevance only when they continue to generate present-day economic effects.
In Article 3(1) of Regulation 269/2014 the second analytical strand concerns the Court’s evolving interpretation of criterion (g), reflecting its effort to look beyond the formal structures of corporate governance and uncover the underlying social realities of influence and control. When read across the case law, the Court’s reasoning points to a conception of economic authority in Russia that operates through diffuse mechanisms—such as voting blocs, informal alliances, and reputational leverage—rather than through ownership alone.
Institutional context was added through a questionnaire to the European External Action Service (EEAS),Footnote 22 which confirmed that each designation relies on multiple concurring sources, mainly open-source evidence, with occasional classified intelligence, and that transparency and verifiability are core to the Council’s evidentiary practice.
By combining doctrinal synthesis, systematic coding, and institutional insight, this methodology reveals the structural logic of EU sanctions jurisprudence. It shows how judicial review has evolved beyond evidentiary sufficiency to articulate a doctrine linking historical continuity and current geopolitical accountability, providing the analytical foundation for the substantive analysis that follows.
III. Judicial review of EU sanctions: error of assessment and the standard of a sufficiently solid factual basis
The sanctions regime against Russia, like other EU restrictive measures, operates under its own designation criteria. While the formulation of those criteria reflects political discretion, their application to specific persons or entities is a legal question that must rest on verifiable facts. Within this evidentiary sphere, the CJEU plays a crucial role: preventing arbitrary exercises of executive power and ensuring that sanctions listings are grounded in a sufficiently solid factual basis.
Two interrelated notions define this process of judicial review. The first, error of assessment, is the judicial test by which the Court examines whether the Council’s evaluation of evidence withstands legal scrutiny. The second, the requirement of sufficiently solid factual basis, represents the evidentiary threshold that the Council must meet to sustain a lawful designation. Together, these principles reconcile political discretion with legal accountability.
A. Evidentiary foundations of EU sanctions law: sufficiently solid factual basis and error of assessment
The jurisprudence of the CJEU, beginning with Organisation des Modjahedines du Peuple d’Iran (OMPI),Footnote 23 developed through Kadi II,Footnote 24 refined in Anbouba,Footnote 25 and further elaborated in Prigozhina,Footnote 26 has progressively systematised the evidentiary foundations of EU sanctions designations. In this jurisprudence, the error of assessment defines the scope of judicial review, while the requirement of a sufficiently solid factual basis operates as the evidentiary threshold against which that judicial test is applied.
In OMPI, the General Court introduced the manifest error of assessment test, confirming that the Council’s discretion in foreign policy is not absolute. The Court must verify procedural compliance, factual accuracy, and the absence of manifest error or misuse of power.
The Kadi II judgment deepened this reasoning, affirming that the right to effective judicial protection demands that any decision individually affecting a person be founded on a sufficiently solid and verifiable factual basis. Judicial review cannot therefore remain abstract; the Court must determine whether the reasons given for listing are substantiated by specific, precise, and consistent evidence.Footnote 27
Building on this, Anbouba clarified that judicial review focuses on three interrelated dimensions: (1) the criteria for listing, (2) the statement of reasons, and (3) the supporting evidence. Failure in any of these warrants annulment.
Finally, Prigozhina extended this doctrine to association-based listings, where the Court required proof that the listed person and the targeted leader are ‘generally linked by common interests’.
Together, this jurisprudence forms the doctrinal backbone of the CJEU’s approach to judicial review in sanctions cases. While the Council retains discretion to determine who may be targeted under EU sanctions, that discretion is constrained by two legal safeguards: an evidentiary threshold, the requirement of a sufficiently solid factual basis, and a judicial review test, the Court’s examination for error of assessment. The Court ensures that each listing is supported by specific, precise, and consistent evidence.
B. Procedural and substantive pleas in sanctions designations litigation
Applicants in sanctions litigation advance both procedural and substantive pleas.Footnote 28 Procedural pleas, exemplified in Kiselev Footnote 29 and RT France v Council,Footnote 30 concern the duty to provide reasons and uphold defence rights.Footnote 31 Substantive pleas, by contrast, challenge the sufficiency of evidence and allege errors of assessment in the Council’s reasoning. Under Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union,Footnote 32 the Court ensures that any restrictive measure affecting individuals must rest on a sufficiently solid factual basis. Judicial review therefore extends beyond procedural compliance to a substantive verification that at least one of the stated reasons for listing is supported by specific and concrete evidence.
C. Evaluating evidence: open sources and contextual flexibility
Applicants often challenge the Council’s reliance on open sources. The Court, however, applies an unfettered assessment of evidence, weighing all materials, including press reports and findings of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), by their coherence, reliability, and origin.Footnote 33 Given the Council’s lack of investigative powers, it may legitimately rely on open sources, especially in contexts like Russia’s war against Ukraine, where independent verification may be impossible. This contextual flexibility enables the Court to maintain a realistic evidentiary standard while preserving the right to effective judicial protection. In effect, the Court balances the constraints of foreign-policy decision-making with the demands of legal certainty and individual justice.
D. Confidential evidence and the Ponomarenko precedent
Reliance on open sources is not merely judicially tolerated but institutionally endorsed. In our questionnaire to the EEAS,Footnote 34 representatives confirmed that, under Regulation 269/2014, each listing must satisfy at least one legal criterion and be supported by an ‘evidence package’ composed of multiple, reliable, and concurring sources. They explained that ‘The evidence is usually derived from open-source information, though the use of classified intelligence remains possible’, and noted regular exchanges of information with partner states such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.
Two implications follow. First, while intelligence material can supplement the record, open-source documentation remains the primary evidentiary foundation of EU sanctions designations, reflecting a preference for verifiability and transparency. Second, the EEAS’s acknowledgement that classified intelligence may occasionally be used highlights the institutional sensitivity surrounding judicial handling of secret evidence.
That sensitivity is formalised in Article 105 of the General Court’s Rules of Procedure (2015),Footnote 35 which created a framework for submitting and examining confidential material. Article 105 represents a significant procedural innovation: it allows the EU judiciary to review intelligence directly while reconciling secrecy with due process.Footnote 36 Under the adversarial principle (Article 64), evidence must normally be disclosed to both parties. Article 105 provides an exception, permitting the Council to withhold information whose disclosure would endanger the security of the Union, a Member State, or international relations. The sensitive material is then filed separately with an accompanying justification for non-disclosure, and the General Court determines both its relevance and the necessity of confidentiality.
The Ponomarenko Footnote 37 case was the first sanctions case to test the new confidentiality framework in practice. There, the Council submitted a classified ‘WK file’, together with a non-confidential summary and, subsequently, a partially declassified version. The General Court upheld this procedure as lawful, emphasising that the redactions were limited to protecting the identity of the report’s author, while the substantive evidence remained accessible and reviewable.
E. Member State intelligence and Council evidence in designation proceedings
Within EU sanctions practice, Member State intelligence and the Council’s ‘WK files’ constitute distinct evidentiary categories. The WK files form the standard dossiers relied upon before the EU courts and are the documentary basis the Council must transmit to designated individuals. Prepared primarily by the EEAS and the Commission, they draw on open-source materials such as company registers, media reporting, and compliance databases.
By contrast, Member State intelligence typically informs the political stage of adopting restrictive measures but is rarely incorporated into WK files or submitted during litigation. Member States have no legal obligation to disclose intelligence before the EU Courts and generally refrain from doing so, invoking the protection of sources and national security. As a result, until very recently, sanctions cases were adjudicated almost exclusively on open-source material.
The Ponomarenko case marked a turning point as the first practical application of Article 105 of the General Court’s Rules of Procedure, which permits the submission of classified material under judicial control. In that case, the Council submitted a classified WK file, accompanied by a public summary and later a partially declassified version. The Court upheld this procedure as lawful, noting that redactions were limited to the identity of the author for safety reasons, while the substantive content—drawn from company websites and compliance databases—remained accessible and reviewable.Footnote 38 The applicant’s claim that such open sources lacked reliability was dismissed; the Court affirmed that, given the Council’s lack of investigative powers in Russia, open-source evidence retained full probative value.
Ponomarenko thus underscores both the institutional sensitivity surrounding intelligence in EU sanctions litigation and the structural tension between secrecy and due process. Politically, Member State intelligence may inform listings; legally, it remains filtered out of judicial proceedings, making Ponomarenko the first and only practical test of Article 105 to date.
F. Comparative perspective: US OFAC review
A defining feature of EU sanctions law is the CJEU’s non-deferential, full judicial review of listings. Unlike systems where courts intervene only if a decision is plainly unreasonable, the EU Courts require that every designation rest on verifiable, specific, and consistent evidence meeting the ‘sufficiently solid factual basis’ test. This standard gives practical effect to Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights,Footnote 39 ensuring that sanctioned persons have a genuine opportunity to contest their listing before an independent court.
By contrast, judicial review of US sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Administrative Procedure Act is far narrower.Footnote 40 The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) operates under a deferential ‘arbitrary and capricious’ standard,Footnote 41 and classified evidence is withheld from the courts and applicants. As a result, the designated party’s ability to mount a defence is severely constrained,Footnote 42 and successful challenges are rare. Cases such as Oleg Deripaska v Mnuchin Footnote 43 and Exxon Mobil v Mnuchin Footnote 44 illustrate the steep obstacles faced by designated parties.
IV. Sanctions case-law analysis and taxonomy
Within the broader body of litigation, a distinct subgroup of cases reveals how the criteria of ‘association’ and ‘leading businessperson’ converge through the legal architecture of trusts.Footnote 45 The Court consistently interprets these structures not as neutral instruments of estate planning but as vehicles of wealth concealment that sustain oligarchic embeddedness. Trust beneficiaries are treated as ‘associated persons’ when they continue to derive benefit, directly or indirectly, from arrangements established by sanctioned individuals; trust settlors, conversely, are classified as ‘leading businesspersons’ when they use such arrangements to preserve control or advantage while divesting formal ownership. This jurisprudence marks a decisive move from formal to functional reasoning: sanctions law targets economic realities, not legal fictions.
A. Trust beneficiaries as associated persons
In Ismailova,Footnote 46 the applicant, sister of Alisher Usmanov, argued that an exclusion clause in her trust suspended any benefit and thus severed association. The Court rejected that view, holding that:
1. Exclusion clauses are conditional and reactive, not substantive: they only suspend benefits for the duration of the listing and automatically reinstate them upon de-listing.
2. This shows that the applicant’s association with the settler (Usmanov) was structural and enduring, not broken.
The Court decided that trust was established primarily to protect and conceal Usmanov’s wealth. Being a beneficiary, even conditionally excluded, was equivalent to participating in such a scheme.
In contrast, in A. Melnichenko,Footnote 47 concerning the wife of Andrey Melnichenko, the applicant did not rely on an exclusion clause but contended that her role as a trust beneficiary was purely nominal. She argued that she held no substantive position in the trust or its underlying companies and exercised neither control nor influence over their assets. The General Court rejected this characterisation, finding that the trust formed part of a deliberate mechanism through which Melnichenko restructured his wealth to shield it from restrictive measures while maintaining access for his close family. Her designation as a beneficiary thus reflected not formal coincidence but continuing economic association, irrespective of her professed passivity.
B. Leading businesspersons as trust settlors
The mirror image appears in Kantor Footnote 48 and Melnichenko,Footnote 49 where the Court examined whether settlors who had ceded formal control remained ‘leading businesspersons’. Both argued that creating a trust and renouncing ownership severed their nexus with strategic enterprises. The Court viewed such gestures with scepticism, particularly when made in tempore suspecto, immediately before designation, interpreting them as circumvention.
In Melnichenko, the applicant argued that his withdrawal as a trust beneficiary shortly before his designation severed his economic ties. The Court treated this manoeuvre with marked scepticism, describing it as in tempore suspecto, a withdrawal too close to the listing date to be credible. Even if he no longer formally owned or directly benefited from the assets, his long-standing role in building and leading strategic companies meant that his influence endured. The Court saw the trust as a mechanism designed to shield wealth from sanctions while leaving his economic footprint intact and therefore concluded that his designation as a leading businessperson remained justified.
Kantor presented a distinct but related scenario. The applicant argued that, having relinquished direct share ownership, ceased all executive functions, and remained only a trust beneficiary, he could no longer be regarded as a ‘leading businessperson’. The Court firmly rejected this reasoning. By establishing a trust and naming himself and his minor children as beneficiaries, Kantor had, through layered intermediary structures, preserved a continuing economic interest in the Acron group. The use of a trust as an intermediate legal device could not sever that interest or obscure the underlying reality of ownership. The Council was therefore entitled to conclude that, in his dual capacity as settlor and beneficiary, Kantor remained economically connected to Acron, notwithstanding the formal interposition of legal arrangements.Footnote 50 His dual role as settlor and beneficiary reinforced the conclusion that he remained economically connected to Acron, regardless of the formal interposition of legal arrangements. Together, these cases establish that trusts do not insulate oligarchs from the reach of sanctions when they preserve either direct benefit, as in Kantor, or family benefit, as in Melnichenko. The Court also closed a potential avenue of circumvention and reaffirmed that sanctions law targets the economic realities, not legal fictions.
C. Oligarchic disengagement: Soviet legacies and sanctions accountability
Beyond the trust cases, the Court has begun constructing a taxonomy of disengagement that differentiates among Russian oligarchs according to the extent and credibility of their withdrawal from strategic economic sectors and political life. This emerging taxonomy distinguishes between those who remain fully embedded, those who have only partially exited, and those who have convincingly demonstrated complete disengagement from the Russian economic system.
Within this jurisprudential cluster, Kantor v Council Footnote 51 stands alongside Akhmedov v Council,Footnote 52 Abramovich v Council,Footnote 53 Shamalov v Council,Footnote 54 OT v Council,Footnote 55 Bazhaev v Council,Footnote 56 Pumpyanskiy (Father) v Council,Footnote 57 Ovsyannikov v Council,Footnote 58 Mndoiants v Council,Footnote 59 and Rashevsky v Council.Footnote 60 Taken together, these judgments illustrate how the Court looks beyond formal divestments, restructurings, or the relinquishment of executive functions to assess whether an oligarch has genuinely severed ties with Russia’s strategic sectors, or whether enduring economic interests, family benefits, or residual influence continue to justify designation as a ‘leading businessperson’.
D. Kantor as a landmark case
Kantor stands out as a landmark in the Court’s sanctions jurisprudence for explicitly incorporating the Soviet past into the assessment of criterion (g). The Court clarified that the status of a ‘leading businessperson’ cannot be determined solely by reference to current executive functions, recent shareholdings, or formal corporate titles. Rather, criterion (g) demands an appraisal of an applicant’s long-term trajectory of influence, including the economic and political foundations established in the Soviet era and sustained into the present. By recognising the probative value of historic continuity, the Court signalled that disengagement must be tested not only against present circumstances but also against the enduring accumulation of power and privilege.
This doctrinal turn positions Kantor as a pivotal precedent: it broadens the evidentiary lens through which the Council may justify listings, while simultaneously clarifying that strategic formal withdrawals cannot obscure a deeper, long-standing pattern of alignment with the Russian government.
The case also demonstrates how trust arrangements blur the boundary between formal disengagement and continuing influence, linking the trust-beneficiary cluster with the broader taxonomy of oligarchic embeddedness. Although Kantor claimed to have severed ties by transferring his assets into a trust, the Court found this insufficient: as settlor, he retained decisive influence, and his immediate family, designated beneficiaries, continued to enjoy economic advantage.
Within this framework, the Court’s emerging taxonomy distinguishes three categories of oligarchic status: those who remain fully embedded in the Russian economic system, those who are only partially exited, and those who have convincingly demonstrated full disengagement. The subsequent analysis examines these categories through their shared reasoning and interconnections.
E. The fully exited oligarchs
The first group—Akhmedov,Footnote 61 Ovsyannikov,Footnote 62 Rashevsky,Footnote 63 Mndoiants,Footnote 64 and Pumpyanskiy (Father),Footnote 65—represents the category of fully exited oligarchs. What unites these cases is not only the annulment of the respective listings but also the common doctrinal principle emerging from them. In each, the Court underscored that prior economic or political positions, past affiliations, or symbolic appearances cannot, without more, sustain a designation under criterion (g). The Council bears the burden of producing specific, current, and internally consistent evidence demonstrating that an individual continues to exercise economic influence or provide material benefit to the Russian state.
Collectively, these judgments reinforce two key principles:
1. Temporal proximity matters: executive roles and political offices that ended months or years before the contested act lose evidentiary weight with time; absent new corroborating evidence, they cannot anchor a continuing designation.
2. Substance over symbolism: attending high-level state meetings, state ceremonies, or events involving President Putin, receiving awards, and merely being associated with former political networks may corroborate but cannot independently establish a status of ‘leading businessperson’. The Court insists on proof of real and ongoing economic power.
Together, these rulings delineate the outer boundary of criterion (g): when past influence has become too remote and present-day ties are absent, the nexus with the Russian system is legally severed. Disengagement, if genuine and sustained, is thus sufficient to extinguish the evidentiary foundation for continued designation.
F. The not exited oligarchs
Alongside the line of judgments recognising fully exited oligarchs, the Court has clarified that not every withdrawal from business or politics constitutes genuine disengagement. In Shamalov,Footnote 66 Kantor,Footnote 67 OT v Council,Footnote 68 and Melnichenko,Footnote 69 the Court held that applicants who sold shares or relinquished executive functions too close in time to their designation could not rely on those steps to secure annulment. Such acts, undertaken in tempore suspecto, were treated as attempts at circumvention rather than credible evidence of exit.
These judgments consolidate two recurring principles:
1. Timing and documentation are decisive: divestments or resignations that occur shortly before listing, without verifiable proof of permanence, may legitimately be viewed with suspicion. Absent clear and contemporaneous evidence of a durable break, the Council is entitled to maintain the designation.
2. Continuity of influence outweighs formal withdrawal: even if ownership is transferred or executive status renounced, the Court examines whether residual influence, family benefit, or strategic alignment persists. Formal gestures taken in anticipation of sanctions are not enough to sever the nexus to the Russian system.
In Shamalov, the applicant’s recent resignation as vice-chairman of Sibur’s management board was found to be too proximate and poorly documented, and the Court characterised it as in tempore suspecto, a tactical move to pre-empt sanctions. A similar conclusion was reached in OT, where the applicant’s sale of shares and resignation from executive functions in Alfa Group were deemed too close in time and inadequately substantiated to negate his long-standing influence. In Kantor, the transfer of assets into a family trust failed to severe his economic ties, as the arrangement continued to benefit both himself and his family. Likewise, in Melnichenko, the creation of trust with family as beneficiaries was interpreted as a mechanism of evasion rather than proof of genuine disengagement.
G. The partially exited oligarchs
Abramovich Footnote 70 and Bazhaev Footnote 71 occupy the intermediate category in the Court’s taxonomy of oligarchic embeddedness. Both applicants contended that they had stepped back from executive responsibilities and thus ceased to qualify as ‘leading businesspersons’. Yet, in each, the Court identified specific, substantive links demonstrating that disengagement was only partial.
In Bazhaev, the issue was whether a former executive could still be lawfully designated on the basis of past leadership roles and participation in strategic state projects. The Court rejected the applicant’s claim of disengagement, finding that a 2021 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Russian Platinum and VEB.RF, the Russian state development bank, itself a sanctioned entity, anchored Bazhaev’s continuing influence. Signed in President Putin’s presence, the MoU concerned the large-scale Chernogorskoye platinum-copper-nickel project, projected to produce seven million tonnes annually, with Russian Platinum responsible for roughly 20% of output. Despite subsequent corporate dissolutions, this agreement demonstrated enduring economic alignment with Kremlin priorities.
In Abramovich, the question was whether a minority shareholding in Evraz, a major Russian steel and mining company, sufficed to justify designation. The applicant argued that his reduced holdings and absence from public life evidenced genuine withdrawal, emphasising his philanthropic work and lack of political engagement. The Court disagreed, holding that Evraz remained a strategically vital company whose activities generated substantial revenue for the Russian state. Even as a minority shareholder, Abramovich retained a material economic stake in a key industrial sector. Criterion (g) does not require current executive roles or controlling interests; it is enough that the individual’s financial holdings link them to state-aligned industries of strategic importance.
What bridges these two cases is the Court’s focus on different yet equally decisive indicators of continued embeddedness. In Abramovich, the obstacle to exit lay in his minority shareholding in Evraz; in Bazhaev, it was his role in concluding an MoU with a Russian state bank.
H. Minority shareholder cases
A coherent line of case law has emerged around the question of whether a minority shareholder may nonetheless qualify as an ‘influential or leading businessman’. Key judgments include Uss v Council,Footnote 72 Deripaska v Council,Footnote 73 Kozitsyn v Council,Footnote 74 Konov v Council,Footnote 75 Vinokurov v Council,Footnote 76 and Timchenko v Council.Footnote 77 Collectively, these cases delineate how the General Court interprets economic influence, corporate participation, and sectoral embeddedness independently of managerial control or majority ownership.
The central issue in Uss v Council was whether a passive shareholder, holding 38.7% of Sibugol, a major Russian coal company, without executive role or managerial authority, could nonetheless qualify as an influential/leading businessman. The applicant argued that his lack of involvement in management and the limited fiscal significance of coal to the Russian budget excluded him from criterion (g). The Court rejected these claims, holding that neither executive function nor direct control is required. What matters is substantial participation in a sector that provides significant revenue to the Russian state. The Court reaffirmed that coal falls within the mining sector already deemed strategic in Mordashov v Council, relying on uncontested evidence of Russia’s 221 million tonnes of coal exports in 2022 and Sibugol’s 0.66% share of national output. The Court thus upheld the designation, confirming that criterion (g) extends to substantial shareholdings in strategic sectors, even when the shareholder is passive.
While also involving minority shareholding, Deripaska’s case is significant in relation to the Court’s decision to decouple EU sanctions law from OFAC practice. Deripaska’s defence rested heavily on the restructuring agreement he had concluded with the US Department of the Treasury’s OFAC in December 2018. Under that arrangement, his direct stake in Rusal was reduced to just 0.01%, his indirect holding in EN+ (the parent company controlling 57% of Rusal) was lowered from approximately 70% to 44.95%, and his voting rights in EN+ shares were capped at 35%, with the balance transferred to an independent trustee.Footnote 78 On this basis, Deripaska argued that under EU practice he could not be regarded as the owner of Rusal and that, consistent with OFAC’s delisting of EN+ and Rusal in 2019, the Court should also consider his influence severed.
The Court acknowledged the OFAC restructuring but emphasised that the EU sanctions framework applies its own legal standards, distinct from those of the United States, and that the delisting of companies under OFAC rules had no binding effect on the Union’s assessment of an individual’s influence. The Court made clear that criterion (g) turns not solely on formal ownership or managerial control but on the broader question of whether an individual’s capital holdings and economic presence in a strategic sector confirm their embeddedness in the Russian system. In Deripaska’s case, the Court noted that, regardless of whether his 44.95% stake in EN+ technically made him the owner of Rusal, those holdings remained substantialFootnote 79 and tied him to one of Russia’s most strategically important companies.
In Kozitsyn v Council, the applicant held only 9% in Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC) and argued that such passive investment could not constitute ‘economic activity’ under criterion (g), invoking analogies to the concept of economic activity in EU VAT law. The Court dismissed this reasoning, clarifying that the CFSP framework defines ‘economic activity’ autonomously. What matters is not daily management but sustained presence in a revenue-generating sector. The applicant’s recent resignation as CEO, just two days before listing, was deemed insufficient to sever his influence, as criterion (g) evaluates long-term economic trajectories rather than momentary titles.
In Konov v Council, the General Court was asked to decide whether a former chairman of the board of directors and minority shareholder of SIBUR Holding, a major Russian petrochemical company, could lawfully remain designated as an ‘influential businessman’. The Court, however, sided with the applicant. The Court found that the Council had relied solely on his past corporate role without showing continuing influence or current ties to the petrochemical sector.Footnote 80 Because the Council failed to provide a ‘sufficiently solid factual basis’, the listing was annulled. Konov thus marks the boundary of criterion (g): past roles cannot, without corroborating evidence of ongoing influence, sustain continued designation.
The Vinokurov judgment is significant because it refined the treatment of minority shareholdings by contextualising them within the company’s ownership structure. While the applicant framed his 29.2% indirect stake in Magnit as a passive investment, the Court emphasised that such a holding cannot be dismissed as marginal when placed within the context of dispersed ownership. With more than two-thirds of Magnit’s remaining capital held as free float, scattered among numerous investors, the applicant’s concentrated block assumed decisive weight. The Court rejected as irrelevant the fact that Magnit was publicly listed and partly owned by foreign investors; what mattered was the relative influence conferred by his holding in a company recognised as both economically strategic and revenue-generating for the Russian state. The ruling confirmed that even minority shareholders may fall under criterion (g) where market structure amplifies their influence.
Timchenko is a landmark decision clarifying that influence may arise from collective control within a shareholder bloc. The applicant owned 10.32% stake in Bank Rossiya, which has been widely described in investigative reporting as ‘Putin’s personal bank’. He argued that such a small stake, without managerial control or direct authority, could not justify restrictive measures. The Court disagreed, noting that he was part of a stable shareholder group—including Yuri Kovalchuk (39.87%), Nicolay Shamalov (9.64%), and Sergei Roldugin (3.03%), all publicly identified as close associates of President Putin. Acting together, this bloc exercised substantial strategic influence over a financial institution known as ‘Putin’s personal bank’.
The Court accepted open-source evidence, including the Panama Papers and corroborating reports on Bank Rossiya’s role in Kremlin-linked offshore networks, as sufficiently probative. Timchenko’s continued silence and retention of shares after both 2014 and 2022 were interpreted as tacit endorsement of the bank’s operations. The judgment thus extended criterion (g) to encompass bloc-based influence sustained through association and inaction.
I. Majority shareholders
Several cases involve applicants who were majority shareholders, though their designations rested on different legal bases, from criterion (g) to (a) and (d). Aven Footnote 81 and Fridman and Others Footnote 82 are central to understanding how the Court treats post-Soviet ties as anchors for present accountability. Both men held controlling stakes in Alfa Group, owner of Alfa Bank, but the dispute extended beyond corporate control to the evidentiary use of historical proximity to President Putin. The Council argued that Putin rewarded Alfa Group’s loyalty by facilitating international ventures, including a 2005 Turkish telecom acquisition, and that the applicants later acted as intermediaries for his circle, citing their participation in a 2018 Washington delegation intended to influence Western sanctions policy. Both cases raised fundamental questions about the temporal reach of the EU sanctions regime and how far back it can extend to capture individuals with long-standing ties to Putin’s inner circle.Footnote 83
The Court drew a clear line: pre-2014 benefits could not sustain a Ukraine-related designation unless the Council proved that they formed part of a plan to annex Crimea. Geopolitical plausibility alone was insufficient; the Council had to document a direct link between past favours and the 2014 aggression.Footnote 84
Among three other majority-shareholder cases, Rashnikov,Footnote 85 Moskovitch,Footnote 86 and Khan,Footnote 87 the latter two stand out.Footnote 88 In Khan, the Court rejected the argument that Alfa Bank’s revenue contributions were merely regional, clarifying that criterion (g) covers the Russian government ‘in its entirety’ and includes both direct (corporate) and indirect (VAT) taxes. The banking sector as a whole was deemed a substantial source of state income.
In Moskovitch, the Court emphasised that majority shareholding alone is not decisive. It assessed Moskovich’s dual role as controlling shareholder (43.12% and 70%) and chairman of the board of directors of Rusagro, Russia’s largest agricultural holding, whose vertical integration and market dominance (46% of white sugar, 29% of brown sugar) gave it national economic weight and significant indirect fiscal impact.
J. Economic transactions and sanctions liability
The cases of Ezubov v Council Footnote 89 and Mordashov v Council Footnote 90 represent two ends of the spectrum in the Court interpretation of economic transactions under EU sanctions law. In both, the key issue was whether share transfers or corporate restructurings amounted to a ‘benefit’ from sanctioned actors, but their legal contexts differed.
In Ezubov, the Council claimed that the applicant benefited from his cousin Oleg Deripaska’s status as a leading businessperson.Footnote 91 The Court disagreed, holding that family ties alone do not suffice: only one-sided, non-market enrichment qualifies as a ‘benefit’. Documented, arm’s-length transactions, especially those predating sanctions, fall outside that scope. Lacking proof of undue advantage, the listing was annulled.
Mordashov, by contrast, exemplified the opposite. His sale of a 5.9% stake in Bank Rossiya was opaque and undervalued, suggesting a sham to conceal ownership. Through Severgroup, he retained indirect control over Power Machines, whose turbines were used in Crimea in breach of EU restrictions.Footnote 92 These links evidenced both material support and policy alignment with the Kremlin, justifying maintenance of his designation.
K. A cluster of outliers: classified evidence, media influence, and Ukrainian detention
A small but analytically distinct group of sanctions cases departs from the typical patterns of business ownership or managerial control. These include Ponomarenko,Footnote 93 Khurdaverdyn,Footnote 94 Usmanov,Footnote 95 and Boguslayev,Footnote 96 each defined by atypical factual or evidentiary contexts, such as reliance on classified intelligence, media influence, or detention by Ukrainian authorities.
Ponomarenko remains the only sanctions challenge to date in which the Council relied on classified evidence under Article 105 GC, introducing intelligence reports as part of its evidentiary file for the purpose of designation.Footnote 97 The applicant was designated under criterion (d) through his shareholding in companies that were involved in financing and building the Gelendzik complex, known as Putin’s Palace. Ponomarenko argued that he had divested from these companies and had no role in the financial flows that allegedly supported its construction. He claimed therefore that he could not be said to provide material or financial support to President Putin or other decision-makers. The Court rejected this defence and held that the Council did not need to show his direct involvement in financial flows. Instead, his continued shareholdings in companies directly engaged in financing and implementing the Gelendzhik complex sufficed to establish such support. This was demonstrated through classified intelligence submitted by the CouncilFootnote 98 and other coherent evidence that was submitted.
In Usmanov, the owner of Kommersant contested his designation under criterion (d), arguing that media ownership alone did not constitute support for decision-makers. The Court disagreed. The Council’s position was that ownership of a major media outlet in Russia, particularly by an oligarch with close ties to President Putin and extensive business interests, constitutes an effective means of indirectly controlling editorial content. This was reinforced by the broader regulatory context, including the 2015 law restricting foreign ownership in Russian media, which consolidates domestic oligarchic control.Footnote 99 While Usmanov argued that he exercised no editorial authority over Kommersant, international sources portrayed him as closely aligned with the Kremlin. On that basis, the Court accepted that editorial independence may have been curtailed under his ownership, meaning that his media position could be treated as material support to Russian decision-makers, even while no direct editorial control was proven.
Khudaverdyan involved the former deputy general director of Yandex, Russia’s dominant search engine. Designated as an influential businessman, he argued that his role was technical and apolitical. The Court rejected this analogy, emphasising that Khudaverdyan was not a passive investor but a senior executive at a company of exceptional strategic importance to Russia’s economy. The Court found that Yandex, as the central node of Russia’s digital ecosystem, not only served tens of millions of users and businesses but also contributed significantly to national economic growth, comparable in scale to the energy sector. It pointed to supporting evidence, including shareholder documents and sectoral reports, showing that the information and communications technology (ICT) sector generates substantial government revenue and employs over 1.3 million people. Against this backdrop, Yandex was portrayed as a company of systemic importance whose executives could not be considered detached from Russian power structures. Although the applicant had resigned, he retained influence through his continuing role in the specially created Public Interest Foundation (FIP) structure overseeing Yandex and as a consultant, which the Court held undermined his claim of having severed ties. His participation in the high-level Kremlin meeting with President Putin on 24 February 2022, attended only by the heads of Russia’s most powerful companies, further demonstrated his standing as an influential businessman.
Finally, Boguslayev, former president and shareholder of Motor Sich, was unique for being detained in Ukraine at the time of renewal. The Court held that imprisonment by Ukrainian authorities effectively severed his capacity to exert influence or support Russia. Although his prior actions, including aircraft-engine supplies and alleged separatist links, justified earlier listings, the Council failed to substantiate ongoing influence, rendering renewal unjustified.
L. Executive functions and sanctions liability
Cases turning primarily on executive function rather than ownership remain exceptional. Within this narrow cluster—Khurdaverdyan (already discussed among outliers), Kesaev,Footnote 100 and Bazhaev Footnote 101—the Court assessed whether an applicant’s leadership role in a major company could, by itself, justify designation under Article 3(1)(g) of Regulation 269/2014.
Among these, Kesaev stands as the only case where the applicant still held an active executive position at the time of designation. Kesaev was Chairman of Mercury Group and an indirect owner of Megapolis Group, which controlled about 75% of Russia’s tobacco market. The Court ultimately upheld his designation, concluding that it was his indirect ownership of Megapolis, rather than his executive position at Mercury Group, that provided the decisive basis for maintaining the designation.
By contrast, Bazhaev represents a hybrid case: although the applicant had resigned from his corporate chairmanship before designation, the effects of his executive function extended beyond his tenure. The Court found that his earlier decision to sign an MoUFootnote 102 with the Russian government in that capacity demonstrated continuing alignment and enduring influence.
These judgments confirm that corporate executive-function-based designations are rare and narrowly confined. Only in Kesaev did the applicant hold an active executive office, while Bazhaev illustrates how past executive actions may retain significance in assessing ongoing influence.
M. Criminological techniques of neutralisation
In nearly all sanctions cases involving Russian business figures, applicants deploy criminological techniques of neutralisation to downplay their responsibility and reframe their executive or ownership roles as non-political and morally neutral.Footnote 103 They portray themselves as ordinary business actors caught in the crossfire of geopolitical measures, thereby recasting their conduct as technical, collective, and legally constrained rather than political or strategic. The most common techniques include denial of responsibility, denial of injury/minimisation, condemnation of the condemners, and appeal to relative responsibility.
These rhetorical strategies also invert the core logic of corporate governance by portraying ownership, particularly minority ownership, as devoid of influence or control. Applicants seek to dissociate shareholding from the exercise of power, implicitly contesting the foundational principle that shareholders, including minority blockholders, retain rights and mechanisms through which they can shape corporate direction and policy. While classic corporate governance theory emphasises the separation of ownership and control, a substantial body of literature shows that large shareholders, even when classified as minority owners, frequently exercise meaningful influence over managerial decisions, corporate strategy, and governance outcomes through voting power, board representation, and informal channels of oversight.Footnote 104
V. Family, fortune, and sanctions: the Court’s approach to the next generation of Russia’s elite
Association cases occupy a distinctive place within EU sanctions jurisprudence.Footnote 105 While they require the Court to interpret what it means to ‘benefit’ from a sanctioned individual under Article 2(1)(d) or (g), this is not merely a linguistic or interpretive exercise. At their core, these cases engage a more fundamental question: whether the continuity of privilege within Russia’s post-Soviet elite can itself constitute a legitimate basis for present-day sanctions accountability.
In the decades following the Soviet collapse, many individuals, particularly women and relatives of oligarchs, acquired wealth and social prominence through family ties and access to capital during the turbulent privatisation era.Footnote 106 The Council has frequently relied on these circumstances, arguing that inherited wealth, reputational advantage, or enduring family associations amount to ongoing ‘benefit’ derived from already sanctioned individuals.
The Court, however, has drawn a clear temporal boundary. It has acknowledged that indirect advantages, such as wealth accumulation through family influence, may qualify as a ‘benefit’, but only where the connection remains operational at the time of the Council’s listing or renewal. The Court explicitly rejected attempts to treat historical or familial dependence as sufficient grounds for restrictive measures.Footnote 107 Benefits that may have existed in the past, or that merely reflect the applicant’s inherited privilege, do not satisfy the evidentiary threshold required for continued designation. The existence of wealth is not in dispute; what matters is how that wealth operates, whether it serves to sustain, amplify, or transmit the influence of a sanctioned person in the present. Two illustrative cases, involving an ex-wife and a daughter, exemplify the Council’s effort to extend the reach of restrictive measures to individuals representing the well-established and economically privileged strata of Russia’s elite.
In QF v Council,Footnote 108 the applicant, an ex-wife of a sanctioned individual, had undeniably derived early economic advantages from her former husband’s wealth and social standing. Her public visibility and success were, at least in part, traceable to that association. Nonetheless, the Court firmly rejected what it implicitly characterised as a doctrine of perpetual association, the idea that a person’s prior dependence or connection can indefinitely anchor them to another’s political or economic sphere of influence.
In Tokareva v Council,Footnote 109 the applicant, the daughter of a sanctioned oligarch, Nikolay Tokarev, was alleged to have benefited from her father’s wealth and influence. The Council argued that her real estate portfolio comprising several high-value properties had been accumulated through financial support or indirect advantages stemming from her father’s position within Russia’s economic elite. Its underlying rationale was that her prosperity and social standing derived from and were sustained by resources and networks connected to her father’s sanctioned activities. The Court, however, rejected attempts to equate inherited privilege with ongoing benefit. Advantages that may once have existed, or merely reflect the applicant’s familial background, did not meet the evidentiary threshold required for continued designation. In both cases, the General Court annulled the designations, affirming that the mere persistence of wealth or status derived from past associations cannot substitute for concrete evidence of present-day benefit or influence.
The same principle guided the Court’s reasoning in Prigozhina v Council,Footnote 110 where the Council sought to justify the listing of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mother solely on the basis of her family relationship. Despite vague references to ‘other companies’ and a supposed risk of circumvention, the Council provided no evidence of her economic or managerial involvement at the time of listing. The Court annulled the measure, emphasising that kinship alone cannot establish association: sanctions require a tangible link, economic, structural, or otherwise, that could realistically be exploited to circumvent restrictions.
By contrast, two other cases—Pumpanskiy Footnote 111 (son case) and Pumpanskya Footnote 112 (mother case)—concerned family members whose association with the sanctioned patriarch extended beyond lineage. In both instances, the Court found that the benefits derived from the patriarch’s position continued into the present.
In the mother’s case, the Court highlighted her ongoing leadership of the BF Sinara Foundation, a charitable organisation closely linked to her husband’s business network. Through this foundation, which implemented the social responsibility programmes of TMK and the Sinara Group, she maintained visibility, access to resources, and social capital derived from her husband’s position. Although she held no direct business or ownership role within those companies, her management of an institution that advanced their corporate profile and social agenda demonstrated a continuing alignment with her husband’s economic interests.
In the son’s case, the Court emphasised his active involvement in the family’s industrial empire, noting that he contributed to its strategic direction and described himself publicly as a second-generation beneficiary of his father’s enterprises. His operational participation and strategic alignment with his father’s business objectives were sufficient to establish a continuing association. In both instances, the Court found that the benefit persisted in form and effect: neither applicant represented passive inheritance, but rather the ongoing perpetuation of the oligarchic system originally established by the sanctioned patriarch.
In Mazepin v Council,Footnote 113 however, the Court again drew the boundary sharply. The applicant, a former Formula One driver, was alleged to have ‘benefited from’ his father, oligarch Dmitry Mazepin, through past sponsorship by Uralchem. Yet by the time of his listing and its subsequent renewal, the sponsorship had ended and no evidence showed continuing support or financial dependence. The Court annulled the listing, stressing that past advantage does not equate to present benefit, and that restrictive measures must be grounded in specific, contemporaneous evidence of ongoing influence. The glamourous career once financed by oligarchic wealth had ended, and with it, according to the Court, any operative link justifying continued designation.
The only notable exception arises in trust-beneficiary cases,Footnote 114 such as Ismailova v Council and Melnichenko v Council, where the Court treated the trust structure itself as a mechanism of continuing association. In these cases, the trust was designed to preserve and conceal the settlor’s wealth while ensuring that close family members remained potential recipients of its benefits. Even where access to assets was suspended during the listing, the structural link between the settlor and the beneficiaries endured. In such cases, it was the form of wealth management rather than the family relationship alone that constituted the operative channel of influence, bringing the beneficiaries within the scope of Article 3(1)(g).
Taken together, these cases delineate a clear judicial boundary between inherited privilege and active participation in the economic and institutional networks that perpetuate oligarchic influence. From a socio-legal perspective, this distinction exposes a striking inversion of how wealth protection typically operates. Under EU sanctions law, the trust, traditionally a safeguard of family wealth and continuity, emerges as a potential liability, while direct inheritance or early-life enrichment often escapes scrutiny and, consequently, legal accountability.
VI. Discussion of results
The legal and procedural dimensions of the Court’s sanctions jurisprudence have already been extensively examined in existing academic literature.Footnote 115 By contrast, the substantive dimensions of this jurisprudence, especially those that bridge legal reasoning with socio-legal perspective, have received far less attention.
This article therefore turns to a set of overlooked but conceptually significant aspects that operate as anchors of accountability in the Court’s reasoning. These are:
1. the role of the post-Soviet past and the continuity of privilege as historical contexts for present-day accountability;
2. the patterns of minority and majority shareholding that structure economic influence within Russia’s strategic sectors;
3. the significance of executive and managerial functions, even in the absence of formal ownership stakes; and
4. the use of trust structures as mechanisms for wealth protection and potential vehicles for sanctions evasion.
These dimensions served as the analytical criteria developed by the author to systematically examine individual cases and identify recurring patterns of connection among wealth, institutional power, and sustained influence. Taken together, they reveal how the Court reconstructs economic power and accountability within the evolving framework of EU sanctions law—transforming what might appear as discrete legal disputes into a broader judicial mapping of Russia’s post-Soviet political economy.
A. Temporal boundaries of accountability
A central research question of this article concerns how the case law defines the temporal boundaries of accountability, meaning how far back in time the EU’s sanctions net can legitimately reach.
Under criterion (g) (‘leading businesspersons’), the Court accepts that an individual’s long-term embeddedness in the Russian economic system and sustained influence may justify continued designation, provided the Council can demonstrate a continuing pattern linking past prominence to present-day economic structures that benefit the Russian state.
This analysis shows that the Court’s interpretation of the temporal framework is broader than the literal wording of criterion (g) might suggest. The message is clear: the past matters, but not all pasts matter equally. The Court distinguishes between remote Soviet-era biographies—where individuals long ago severed ties with Russia’s power networks—and post-Soviet trajectories in which wealth and authority continue to sustain the Russian state. Even modest continuing capital ties, when combined with a history of influence in strategic sectors, may suffice to uphold a designation. By contrast, transfers into trusts or other legal devices are not accepted as evidence of genuine withdrawal when familial or residual benefit remains, since such arrangements merely preserve the economic continuity that sanctions law seeks to capture.
The Court’s interpretation of criterion (g) thus rests on economic function rather than personal loyalty. Sanctions are triggered not by proximity to Putin but by structural roles within the Russian economy. What matters is systemic embeddedness, not direct fiscal transfers to the state. The Court reconstructs how influence and wealth were accumulated over time and demonstrates how those trajectories continue to anchor an individual’s position in today’s economic system. Its approach is reconstructive rather than retrospective—mapping how economic power persists through evolving corporate and financial structures.
By contrast, the jurisprudence under criteria (a) and (d)—which concern active support for actions undermining Ukraine or benefit derived from Russian decision-makers—adopts a much stricter temporal threshold. Historical proximity to Putin or his circle is relevant only if the Council can show that pre-2014 advantages were already linked to preparations for the annexation of Crimea or the destabilisation of Ukraine. This issue came to the fore in Aven, where the Court drew a sharp temporal boundary: there can be no retroactive liability unless the Council proves that benefits granted before 2014 directly contributed to the aggression against Ukraine. The case thus raises foundational questions about how the EU sanctions regime conceptualises historical versus operative influence.
The broader geopolitical context highlights the tension between historical plausibility and legal proof. Even if leaked Kremlin documents reveal Russia’s long-term ambitions to reassert influence across Eastern Europe, framing Ukraine as a springboard towards the Baltic states and Poland,Footnote 116 the Court insists on evidence linking particular advantages to operational acts at the relevant time. Plausibility is not proof: before the EU Courts, the Council must provide specific, contemporaneous evidence that the advantages and/or support in question were directly connected to those ambitions at the time they became operational. Without such proof, historical proximity or ideological alignment with the Kremlin remains insufficient to sustain a lawful designation.
B. Who are the ‘leading businesspersons’? A taxonomy of oligarchic embeddedness
The analysis of case law reveals an implicit taxonomy of oligarchs within the Court’s jurisprudence. The EU sanctions regime, as interpreted by the Court, targets individuals whose wealth, activities, and holdings keep them structurally embedded in sectors that generate substantial revenue for the Russian state.
At one end of this spectrum are the fully embedded: those who continue to occupy senior positions in strategic industries or whose last-minute resignations are deemed in tempore suspecto, suggesting an attempt to evade accountability while maintaining influence. Next are the partially exited, who may have formally stepped back but still retain significant minority shareholdings or strategic partnerships that sustain economic alignment with state-controlled entities. Finally, there are the fully exited: individuals whose withdrawal from Russia’s economic and political system is both genuine and long-standing; for them, past ties are considered too remote to justify continued designation.
Together, these categories clarify that the EU’s focus lies not on personal loyalty or proximity to Putin but on economic function and systemic continuity. In the logic of EU sanctions law, oligarchs are defined not by allegiance but by continuity of influence—individuals whose wealth, accumulated during the post-Soviet transition and preserved through corporate structures, trusts, or strategic sectoral interests, continues to reinforce the economic foundations of the Russian state today.
C. Minority shareholdings and functional influence
Within the category of partially exited oligarchs, a distinct cluster of minority shareholding cases refines how criterion (g) applies to individuals who hold small or partial stakes in Russian enterprises. The Court’s jurisprudence shifts the analytical focus from ownership to functional influence, recognising that economic power often persists through more diffuse and indirect forms of participation.
The case law identifies three configurations of minority shareholding:
1. passive minority holdings, where the investor exercises no managerial control yet may still fall under criterion (g) if their investment lies in a sector of strategic or fiscal importance to the Russian state;
2. substantive capital holdings, where the sheer size or market weight of the stake renders the individual economically embedded, even in the absence of direct control; and
3. bloc influence and dispersed ownership, where coordination among shareholders—or fragmentation among the remaining capital—amplifies the functional leverage of a minority position.
The Court thus treats minority shareholding as context-dependent rather than formally defined. It assesses governance structures, shareholder alignments, and patterns of ownership dispersion to determine whether a minority stake translates into continuing influence within sectors vital to the Russian economy. This functional approach demonstrates the Court’s readiness to rely on open-source evidence, to look beyond formal ownership percentages, and to interpret silence or passivity as probative of systemic and political entanglement with the Kremlin.
Finally, in Deripaska, the Court explicitly distinguished the EU’s sanctions framework from the practice of the US OFAC, affirming that EU law applies its own standards for assessing economic influence and embeddedness rather than importing foreign definitions of control.
D. Majority shareholding and functional influence: emerging principles and outlier cases
Two key insights emerge from the analysis of majority shareholding and related outlier cases. First, majority ownership is insufficient without functional influence; second, the Court increasingly extends accountability through contextual and functional reasoning, looking beyond formal ownership to assess how economic power operates within strategic sectors.
In the cluster of majority shareholding cases decided under the ‘leading businessperson’ criterion (g), the Court has made clear that ownership alone does not justify designation. Instead, it situates shareholding within a broader functional framework—one that considers corporate control, market dominance, sectoral significance, and fiscal contribution to the Russian state. This approach underscores the Court’s insistence that sanctions target economic influence in context, rather than relying on formal thresholds of ownership or capital percentage.
A smaller group of outlier cases extends this reasoning further, revealing how the Court interprets economic and reputational influence as sufficient grounds for restrictive measures. In Ponomarenko, the Court upheld a finding of material support under criterion (d) where the applicant maintained shareholdings in companies financing projects that directly benefited President Putin, most notably the Gelendzhik complex, even in the absence of direct financial transfers. In Usmanov, media ownership was treated as material support when exercised by oligarchs close to the Kremlin, despite the lack of proven editorial control, reflecting the Court’s recognition of informational and reputational influence. Finally, in Khudaverdyan, senior executives of companies of exceptional strategic and economic importance to Russia—such as Yandex—were deemed to be ‘leading businesspersons’ under criterion (g), regardless of their oligarchic status or majority shareholding.
Taken together, these cases illustrate how the Court is widening the functional perimeter of sanctions accountability: from ownership and control towards contextual influence, where strategic roles, reputational power, and economic embeddedness can substitute for formal indicators of authority.
E. Sociological continuity is not legal causality
The analysis of association cases reveals a consistent judicial stance regarding the boundaries of sanctions accountability. Russia’s contemporary power structure is sustained not only by the first generation of oligarchs who accumulated wealth and influence during the chaotic privatisation era but also by their relatives who inherited these assets and leveraged their social standing to preserve or expand oligarchic networks. While post-Soviet privilege undeniably shaped the environment in which this new generation ascended, the Court draws a clear legal distinction between inherited advantage and ongoing influence. Historical privilege, however substantial, does not in itself justify restrictive measures. For sanctions liability to arise, the privilege must be shown to persist in form or effect, specifically to sustain, amplify, or transmit the influence of a sanctioned person in the present day.
The persistence of inherited wealth, status, and access helps to explain how Russia’s ruling networks reproduce both privilege and impunity, echoing one of Edwin Sutherland’s central insights in his theory of white-collar crime: that deviance and impunity are not born of marginalisation but are produced and sustained by high-social status and respectability.Footnote 117 Sutherland argued that the social structure of privilege produces a non-linear, concealed form of deviance: the mechanisms that generate wealth, power, and legitimacy also enable their holders to evade accountability. In that sense, the production of impunity is endogenous to elite systems; it arises not in defiance of status but through it.
Yet, while political science and criminology interpret inherited wealth as a mechanism of unaccountable power, the Court refuses to translate this sociological continuity into legal causality. In the logic of sanctions law, continuity of privilege may be morally and politically significant, but it is legally inert unless it materialises as an active, present-day economic association with a sanctioned individual.
F. The paradox of protection: how EU sanctions transform wealth safeguards into liability
As already noted, association cases reveal a judicial line of demarcation between inherited privilege and active participation. The Court distinguishes between those who merely embody the post-Soviet continuity of wealth, meaning individuals who benefit from privilege but do not actively maintain or extend it through current conduct or institutional roles, and those who sustain it through ongoing institutional or strategic involvement, such as managing businesses, running foundations, or exercising influence that keeps oligarchic networks alive. In this jurisprudence, sanctions do not punish lineage; they target the living transmission of influence.
The exception lies in the trust-beneficiary cases, which expose a striking inversion of how wealth protection typically operates. From a socio-legal perspective, the trust, long regarded as a sophisticated and legitimate instrument for asset preservation and intergenerational transfer, becomes—under EU sanctions law—a liability. The very mechanism designed to insulate family wealth and ensure continuity is reinterpreted as a structure of continuing association with the sanctioned individual.
From a sociological or economic standpoint, trust beneficiaries and heirs may look similar: both are passive recipients of wealth, enjoying privilege without active participation in generating or managing it. They ‘sit and consume’, drawing benefit from systems of inherited or transferred capital. However, from the Court’s legal perspective, the distinction lies in the structure of association, not in the behaviour of the individual. A trust beneficiary is not merely an heir; rather, the trust itself is viewed as a continuing legal and economic instrument that connects the beneficiary to the sanctioned person. The Court treats the trust as a living mechanism of association—a structure deliberately designed to preserve wealth, shield it from restrictive measures, and ensure the settlor’s continuing influence through others.
By contrast, direct inheritance or early-life enrichment—through gifts, business funding, or the transmission of social capital—creates no ongoing legal or institutional link. Once that transfer is complete, the Court treats the resulting privilege as historical rather than actionable, unless the recipient remains actively engaged in sustaining the sanctioned person’s influence.
This jurisprudence carries a clear irony: the more legally sophisticated the mechanism of wealth protection, the stronger the evidentiary link under sanctions law. The Russian oligarch who openly transfers assets to relatives before sanctions may ultimately shield them, whereas the one who relies on formal trust arrangements—long considered prudent and legitimate—creates precisely the kind of enduring economic structure that the EU courts interpret as continuing association. In the logic of sanctions law, legal sophistication becomes a marker of culpable continuity.
G. The legitimacy gap: societal expectations and legal design
From a broader socio-legal perspective, this paradox—where the more legally sophisticated the mechanism of wealth protection is, the stronger is the evidentiary link under sanctions—crystallises yet another tension: the divide between moral expectation and legal design. Sanctions law was framed as an instrument of justice, accountability, and deterrence by the EU bodies.Footnote 118 Inevitably, many Europeans perceived sanctions as instruments of moral accountability for Russia’s elite networks implicated in aggression and corruption. Yet the Court’s strict evidentiary logic confines liability to demonstrable, present-day economic or institutional links, tangible forms of participation, control, or benefit that actively sustain the functioning of sanctioned networks.
If society expected sanctions law to confront the enduring structures of privilege and impunity that underpin Russia’s system of power, the Court’s jurisprudence points in a different direction. Any resulting disappointment lies not in judicial failure but in the fact that the law’s reach is narrower than the moral mandate against which it was politically framed.
VII. Conclusions: a socio-legal reading of sanctions jurisprudence
The Court’s sanctions jurisprudence should not be seen as a mere aggregation of discrete disputes over the legality of individual designations. Read through a doctrinal lens, informed by socio-legal analysis, it reveals an ambition that exceeds textual interpretation under Regulation 269/2014. It functions as a form of judicial mapping, an interpretive reconstruction of how Russia’s political economy operates, how power, capital, and state influence are interwoven, and how these relations endure within the Russian system.
What appears as a sequence of isolated legal disputes instead discloses an evolving socio-legal process. These cases not only determine whether designations are lawfully sustained but also trace how Europe, through the Court of Justice, delineates the moral and economic boundaries of belonging. What began as a foreign-policy response to Russian aggression has evolved into a doctrinal framework through which the European Union defines who may participate in its economic order, under what terms, and with what degree of accountability, and against which histories of privilege.
Yet this jurisprudence exposes a paradox. While the Court reconstructs oligarchic power with notable realism, it confines liability to what can be legally proven in the present. In so doing it preserves the regime’s legitimacy, by avoiding retroactive attribution of responsibility, but leaves unresolved a broader moral expectation: that sanctions should also confront the enduring legacies of post-Soviet privilege, the very foundations that have sustained the consolidation of Putin’s system of power. European Union sanctions law thus remains robust as an instrument of international governance, but an imperfect vehicle for confronting the complex, historically embedded networks of power and patronage that structure Russia’s political and economic order.
Several detailed conclusions follow from this tension:
1. Sanctions law as structural analysis of the Russian economic system: the Court implicitly performs a structural analysis of Russia’s political economy. Its reasoning shows that sanctions target not personal loyalty or ideology but economic function and systemic embeddedness. Judicial reasoning maps how influence is perpetuated through ownership, managerial roles, or trust structures, and thereby redefines ‘association’ in functional and systemic terms.
2. Temporal accountability and the limits of history: the Court acknowledges that post-Soviet trajectories of wealth can ground present accountability under criterion (g), but resists turning history into liability. It distinguishes between the living past, where influence persists, and the closed past, where ties have dissolved. Law thus converts sociological continuity into legal causality only when the connection remains active in the present.
3. From ownership to function: across minority, majority, and exceptional cases, formal ownership is secondary to functional influence. The jurisprudence extends the notion of economic power to encompass managerial authority, market position, informational control, and reputational leverage, an understanding closer to sociological theories of elite reproduction than to corporate law.
4. The paradox of legal sophistication: in the trust-beneficiary cases, mechanisms once considered prudent become evidence of continuing association. Within the moral economy of sanctions, legal sophistication appears as culpable continuity—the more elaborate the insulation, the stronger the inference of control.
5. The legitimacy gap: a gap emerges between societal expectations of justice and the Court’s evidentiary formalism. While sanctions are politically framed as collective accountability, judicial review restricts them to demonstrable, present-day influence.
Finally, the argumentative strategies of applicants mark a novel evolution in the Court’s jurisprudence. By invoking the formal language of corporate governance, collegiality, minority ownership, and procedural compliance, they construct defences that blur the line between accountability and managerial form. This is a domain where criminological insight could provide valuable analytical depth, yet it remains under-represented in legal discourse. Existing legal scholarship has not explored how sanctioned individuals construct their defence, through narratives of distance, denial, or technocratic neutrality, to contest their designation and reframe their relationship to the Russian state.
What emerges is a jurisprudence that is doctrinally precise, politically consequential, and sociologically incomplete, a reminder that law can expose the architecture of power, but not by itself dismantle it, without the intervention of politics or revolution. In practical terms, most challenges have failed: the majority of applicants have seen their listings upheld, confirming that EU sanctions law, while procedurally exacting, remains substantively resilient.
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