Sanctioning Vladimir Putin and Russia’s billionaire oligarchs

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00:01Today, Canada, the United States and the European Union

00:04announced that Vladimir Putin will face personal sanctions.

00:08But how will they do that?

00:13Last year, the Russian anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny

00:16released this documentary showing a massive palace on the Black Sea

00:21that is obviously being built for Mr. Putin.

00:24The property includes extensive gardens and vineyards,

00:27and even a private indoor hockey arena

00:30that is being installed below a helicopter pad.

00:36Putin insisted that the palace did not belong to him.

00:40But the documentary traced how the money to build it

00:43came from many close Putin friends and associates

00:46who have become wildly rich in recent years.

00:50Bill Browder is probably the number one international campaigner

00:54for sanctions against Russia.

00:56He ran an investment fund there until his lawyer was murdered

00:59and he was driven out of the country by Vladimir Putin.

01:03Vladimir Putin is a very rich man.

01:06I estimate that he's worth north of $200 billion.

01:11Most of that money was stolen from the state,

01:13but all of that money is not kept in his name.

01:18He keeps that money in the name of oligarch trustees.

01:21Earlier this week, Putin convened his National Security Council

01:26in a strange socially distanced meeting to discuss his military plans.

01:31From his prison cell, Alexei Navalny tweeted that

01:34our anti-corruption foundation has done investigations into the corruption of every single one of them.

01:41Navalny put out a list of 35 top Russian bureaucrats and oligarchs who should be targeted by sanctions.

01:48Less than half have been targeted so far.

01:51Among the Putin cronies on sanction lists are his longtime friend and judo sparring partner Arkady Rottenberg,

01:59who has become a billionaire with lucrative contracts handed to him by the Russian leader.

02:04Arkady and his brother Boris Rottenberg were the first two oligarchs on the personal sanctions list announced this week in the United Kingdom.

02:13Not on that list so far are people like Leonid Fendun, vice president of the giant Russian oil company Luke Oil.

02:23He owns the Moscow Spartak soccer team,

02:26and his son owns a string of luxury hotels and mansions in the United Kingdom.

02:32There are dozens of billionaire Russian oligarchs who have mansions in the UK along with villas and giant yachts in the south of France.

02:43In London, American lawyer Jameson Firestone is helping the Navalny Foundation target those individuals.

02:49You take the money that they have in Western banks,

02:52you take the assets that they've bought all over the world,

02:56you take their villas, you take their yachts,

02:58you take absolutely everything that's in our jurisdictions,

03:01and you keep them from coming here.

03:03And that's how you, and that can be done through sanctions.

03:06Bill Browder says President Biden has to target the top 50 Russian oligarchs.

03:11It would make it impossible for those oligarchs to conduct any kind of business around the world

03:16because no organization wants to be in violation of U.S. Treasury sanctions.

03:22There is a debate about whether sanctions should be extended not just to the Russian oligarchs,

03:27but to their children who have properties and yachts in the West.

03:31Should that even extend to the children of prominent Russian officials like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

03:37and presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who reside in Western countries?

03:42And Applebaum has written many books about Russia.

03:46All of them have stolen money from their country and spent it abroad.

03:49And so, yes, I do think that going after their money, their property, their families,

03:55many of them have their wealth stored under the names of families,

03:58either spouses or cousins or other relatives,

04:01is really one of the only things that we can do that would actually make them feel something.

04:07Then there is the whole other debate about what Russian sanctions can achieve, whether they work at all.

04:13There is a general consensus that they have not worked well in the past, mostly because they were not strong enough.

04:19Russian-born American journalist Masha Gessen argues that sanctions are very important,

04:25but that they will never alter Vladimir Putin's course of action.

04:29It is wrong to be implicated in the bloodshed and the violence and the violation of international law that Putin is perpetrating.

04:42It is wrong to be funding it in any way. It's a moral question.

04:46It is not a question of affecting Putin's behavior.

04:49Putin's behavior is not going to be affected by sanctions one way or the other.

04:54We have learned this, and we should face up to having learned this.

04:57Then there is the debate over what is called the mother of all sanctions,

05:03if the U.S. government and the U.S. Federal Reserve levied sanctions against the Central Bank of Russia

05:10and Russia's $638 billion worth of gold and cash reserves around the world.

05:16Such a move would likely cause the collapse of the Russian banking system,

05:21but the fallout might spread to Europe and elsewhere as well.

05:27Daniel Fried served as a U.S. Ambassador and Embargo Coordinator at the State Department.

05:33If it looks like World War II, if what we're seeing is massive death and destruction,

05:39the Biden administration will want to reach for the biggest club it's got.

05:44There are risks. There are risks of blowback to the Western financial system

05:49if you hit the Russian financial system hard.

05:54The key question about causing the collapse of the Russian financial system is this.

05:58Would the Russian people blame the West or take their anger out on Vladimir Putin?

06:05I'm not certain that they'll take their anger out on the West,

06:08even though Russian propaganda will try to convince them to do so.

06:12I'm not sure the Russian people are quite as bloodthirsty as their leader.

06:16The NATO countries are in elaborate negotiations about how to punish Russia

06:21with minimal damage to their own economies.

06:24Today, the U.S. took its first symbolic step to target the sons of two of Putin's closest advisors.

06:31The first move to include families.

06:34Terence McKenna, CBC News, Toronto.

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