The US Treasury Department has added a key Russian financial official and a close confidant of Vladimir Putin to the list of people who have been sanctioned. In a press release on Thursday, the Ministry of Finance added Herman Gref, CEO of Russia’s largest financial institution, to the list of sanctions against individuals in its latest action “to impose serious costs on the Russian Federation for illegal, unjustified and its unfounded war against Ukraine. “, Is mentioned in the announcement. “Gref is currently appointed as a leader, official, senior executive or member of the board of the Government of the Russian Federation (GoR),” it added. According to the US Treasury Department, he held various and increasingly senior roles, “including the office of the mayor of St. Petersburg.” He served as Russia’s Minister of Economic Development and Trade from 2000 to 2007 and was CEO and Chairman of Sberbank from 2007, according to Bloomberg. Sberbank, a state-owned banking and financial services company, is Russia’s largest bank. According to Forbes, it was ranked among the best banks in the world in 2019, but fell in 2020. The Insider has previously said that gold trading between the United States and Russia is banned, according to a statement from the US Treasury Department, which cites executive decrees signed by President Joe Biden. In a statement issued by the US Treasury Department on Thursday, it said it had added 328 members of the Duma – the lower house of the Russian parliament – to its sanctions list. The Duma passed a resolution urging Putin to recognize the DNR and the LNR as independent states, even though they are part of Ukraine. Insider’s Kate Duffy previously reported that sanctioned Russian oligarch Peter Aven says he has difficulty paying his bills and is not sure he can hire a cleaner or driver. In early March, Aven resigned from the $ 22 billion investment firm LetterOne, which he co-founded with Mikhail Fridman, another sanctioned Russian oligarch.
