Oliver Bullough, writer of Moneyland and Butler to the World, stated: “£60,000 a month does appear an terrible lot of cash to keep up a sure form of way of life, together with paying personal college charges. And it does elevate questions concerning the effectiveness of the sanctions, even whether it is proscribing Aven spending his personal cash.
“It’s actually a part of a wider drawback of not having a said sanctions technique on this nation. Are we punishing Putin and Russia, depriving oligarchs of their wealth or utilizing the sanctions to assist rebuild Ukraine?”
Oligarch price an estimated £4bn
Mr Aven, who was pictured with the Russian president on the day the invasion of Ukraine started, was sanctioned by British and EU authorities in March.
He has an estimated fortune of £4bn, derived from an empire that features Russia’s largest industrial financial institution and a stake within the possession of retailer Holland & Barrett.
Mr Aven, a patron of the Royal Academy and Tate till he was sanctioned, has no checking account within the UK, however makes use of personal corporations to run his three properties, his household’s private safety and pay for his youngsters’s college charges.
His 18-room mansion, in Wentworth, Surrey, is 29,000 sq ft, has six bedrooms, additional suites, a gymnasium and a wing for a saltwater pool.
Mr Aven was one of many Russian oligarchs who used the UK courts to sue journalist Catherine Belton over claims in her guide Putin’s Folks that he had hyperlinks to the Russian President.
That case has been settled however Ms Belton advised MPs in March this yr that Mr Aven had used UK information legal guidelines to attempt to silence her, which she described as “reputation-whitewashing”.
Mr Aven has been approached for remark.
A Whitehall supply stated sanctions laws allowed Treasury licences to be granted to “allow financial exercise to proceed, the place there’s an acceptable derogation, that will in any other case be prohibited beneath the relevant sanctions regime”.
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