Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven

Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven are Russian businesspersons associated with Alfa Group and the investment firm LetterOne. They are separate individuals and separate sanctions targets. Their challenges to European Union measures provide an important test of the evidence required for individual listings, but neither man should be treated as interchangeable with Alfa Group, LetterOne or the Russian state.

Measures and adaptation

The European Union listed both men in February 2022. The United Kingdom designated them in March 2022, and the United States designated them in August 2023. Each jurisdiction applied its own legal criteria and reasons. Both men disputed the grounds used against them and stepped away from LetterOne's governance after the 2022 measures. Those changes are private adaptations to asset controls, not evidence of state direction.

Current status must be checked person by person and jurisdiction by jurisdiction. The EU's consolidated Regulation 269/2014 as at 17 July 2026 and the UK Sanctions List updated through 24 July 2026 included both names at the 30 July editorial lock. The EU's 23 July implementing act added later listings without removing them. Historical US designation is established by Treasury's August 2023 record. A list entry establishes the authority's decision, not every factual allegation in its statement of reasons.

EU litigation

On 10 April 2024, the EU General Court annulled specified Council acts maintaining Fridman and Aven on the list between 28 February 2022 and 15 March 2023. The Court found that the evidence did not sufficiently establish the relevant criteria for that period. The judgments did not annul every later act or remove measures imposed by the United Kingdom or United States.

Later EU maintenance acts relied on revised grounds. It is therefore inaccurate to describe the 2024 decisions as complete delisting. It is equally inaccurate to treat later listing as erasing the judgments' criticism of the earlier evidentiary files.

Significance

The case shows the legal discipline required in oligarch-focused sanctions. Preventive measures can impose severe restrictions without a criminal conviction, but the responsible authority must still connect evidence to the applicable listing test. Exact dates, grounds, persons and jurisdictions matter.

See also

Russian oligarchs · Oligarch-network mapping and seizure · Coalition sanctions and export controls against Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (2022-present) · Russia · Economic statecraft

Sources

• Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/336 (28 February 2022).
• General Court of the European Union, judgments in *Aven v Council*, T-301/22, and *Fridman v Council*, T-304/22, press release (10 April 2024).
• Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014, consolidated text as at 17 July 2026.
• Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1843 (23 July 2026).
• UK Government, UK Sanctions List.
• US Department of the Treasury, "Treasury Imposes Sanctions on Russian Elites and a Russian Business Association" (11 August 2023).
• LetterOne, "Statement by Mervyn Davies, Chairman and Jonathan Muir, Chief Executive LetterOne" (2 March 2022).