The Polish government has announced sanctions against 50 Russian and Belarusian individuals and entities – adding to measures already imposed by the EU – in an attempt to curb the outflow of billions of zloty from Poland to Russia.
Those on the list include a number of oligarchs – among them billionaires Oleg Deripaska and Mikhail Fridman – as well as state gas firm Gazprom. They will face measures such as the freezing of financial assets, exclusion from participation in public tenders, and a ban on entry to Poland.
One of the individuals affected is Viatcheslav Kantor, a businessman who indirectly owns an almost 20% stake in Grupa Azoty, a large chemicals producer partly owned by the Polish state.
“The Polish sanctions list is a supplement to the EU list,” said interior minister Mariusz Kamiński. “It applies to Russian entities and oligarchs with real interests in our country.”
As well as Gazprom, this includes entitles that previously imported coal from Russia and Donbas, including KTK Polska and Suek Polska, whose effective owners, Sait-Salam Gutseriev and Andrey Melnichenko, are also on the list.
Entities and individuals linked to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus, such as Beloil Poland, are also included.
Deputy interior minister Maciej Wąsik said that the 18 largest firms included on the new sanctions list have transferred over 6 billion zloty (€1.29 billion) to Russia in the last two years. He noted that anyone who now violates the sanctions can be fined up to 20 million zloty, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
Kamiński said that further entities would be added to the list in future, but noted that “many hide behind various companies registered in tax havens”, making it more time consuming to identify them.
Powers to create a sanctions list were established by a law introduced earlier this month, which also banned the import of coal from Russia and prohibited symbols promoting Russian aggression against Ukraine, such as the “Z” logo.
For more on Poland's new law introducing sanctions against Russia and Russian-linked individuals and entities, which was signed by President @AndrzejDuda last night, see our report from last week https://t.co/RJtLOEiqZs
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 15, 2022
Main image credit: MSWiA (under CC BY 3.0 PL)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
