Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin, has been indicted for allegedly evading U.S. sanctions through hidden financial transactions, including sending people flowers and arranging for his girlfriend to give birth in America.
Deripaska, 52, who owns a majority stake in United Co. Rusal PLC 486, one of the world's largest aluminum producers, was placed on the U.S. sanctions list in 2018 along with the conglomerate that he controls, Basic Element Ltd., which barred him from doing business in the U.S.
After Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, the sanctions were tightened after Rusal was removed from the sanctions list by the Treasury Department in January 2019 under President Donald Trump.
Shell companies and webs of lies will not shield Deripaska and his cronies from American law enforcement, nor will they protect others who support the Putin regime, said Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
Deripaska has been one of Russia's wealthiest men for decades and has long had close ties to Putin and has been investigated around the world for money laundering, extortion and racketeering. He denied the allegations.
Also, February 2022, U.K. based oligarchs Lebedev and Abramovich rebuke Russia's invasion of Ukraine — if not Putin personally.
Federal prosecutors said that Deripaska continued to engage in financial transactions in America despite the sanctions, using a corporate entity known as Gracetown Inc. to obscure his ownership of three luxury homes in the U.S. worth tens of millions of dollars and to facilitate the sale of a California recording studio for $3 million.
Deripaska is accused of paying $300,000 to send his girlfriend, Yekaterina Voronina, 33, to the US in 2020 in order to give birth to their child, who was granted American citizenship, court papers said.
Voronina tried to return to the U.S. for the birth of her second child in 2022, but was stopped by immigration officials and sent back to Istanbul, Turkey, from which she had flown.
Prosecutors say that a Deripaska employee, Natalia Bardakova, 45, helped arrange many of his financial transactions in the U.S. Olga Shriki, 42, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in New Jersey, ordered him to make purchases on Deripaska's behalf, including sending flowers and Easter baskets to his social contacts in America and Canada.
The recipients included an unnamed U.S. television host, a former member of Canada's parliament and Deripaska's girlfriend, while she was in America to give birth.
Prosecutors say that Shriki, Bardakova and Voronina conspired to conceal the name of the child's true father, Deripaska, going so far as to change the spelling of the child's last name in the Latin alphabet.
Deripaska, Bardakova, and Shriki are charged with conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions, for which they face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Shriki is charged with destroying communications she had with Deripaska and Bardakova when federal investigators began asking questions. Voronina is accused of lying to federal agents when she arrived in the U.S. in 2020, telling them she was there for tourism rather than to give birth.
A representative for Deripaska didn't immediately return a message seeking comment. Bardakova and Voronina, who live in Russia, couldn't be reached immediately, and it wasn't immediately clear if they had retained lawyers in the U.S. It wasn't clear if Shriki had retained a lawyer. A phone number listed in her name rang unanswered.