Former Putin-appointed governor jailed for breaching UK sanctions

A former Russian government minister, once a governor in illegally annexed Crimea, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison for breaching UK sanctions.

Dmitrii Ovsiannikov was found guilty of deliberately avoiding sanctions by receiving more than £75,000 from his wife, Ekaterina Ovsiannikova, into a newly-opened account, and a new Mercedes Benz SUV from his brother, Alexei Owsjanikow.

Ovsiannikov, who has a British passport, was found guilty on Wednesday of six out of seven counts of circumventing sanctions.

The case is the first prosecution in the UK regarding a breach of sanctions under the Russia Sanctions Regulations, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

Two years after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, President Vladimir Putin appointed Ovsiannikov as acting governor of the "strategically significant" city of Sevastopol in Crimea, the jury heard.

In 2017, elections were held there for the position of governor and Ovsiannikov won. He resigned from the position in July 2019.

As a result of his senior job in illegally annexed Crimea, the EU and UK imposed financial sanctions on him.

In August 2022, Ovsiannikov travelled to Turkey from Russia and applied for a British passport.

Despite the fact that UK sanctions still applied, the jury heard that he was granted a passport in January 2023, which he was entitled to because his father was born in the UK.

Ovsiannikov challenged the EU sanctions and they were lifted just five days after he arrived in the UK.

After arriving in Britain on 1 February 2023, Ovsiannikov moved into his brother's house in Clapham, where his wife and two younger children were already living and attending private school.

On 6 February, the former governor applied for a Halifax bank account and over the next two-and-a-half weeks his wife transferred £76,000 into his account - allowing him to put down a deposit on a Mercedes Benz GLC 300 SUV.

However, the bank later realised he was on the UK sanctions list and froze the account. His brother Alexei Owsjanikow bought the Mercedes instead, paying more than £54,000, the prosecution said.

The prosecution argued that when Ovsiannikov's wife sent him the £76,000 and his brother bought the car they were also in breach of sanctions.

While in May 2024, Owsjanikow paid more than £40,000 in school fees for his brother's two youngest children - which the prosecution argued was also in breach of sanctions.

Ovsiannikov's wife, who was in the public gallery on Friday for the sentencing, was cleared of four counts of circumventing sanctions by assisting with payments totalling £76,000 to her husband in February 2023.

His brother, Owsjanikow, was cleared of breaching sanctions by buying the Mercedes-Benz, arranging car insurance for Ovsiannikov, and by making a Barclays bank account available to him.

However, the jury at Southwark Crown Court found Owsjanikow guilty on two counts of circumventing sanctions by paying school fees of £41,027 for his brother's children. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison, suspended for 15 months.

The prosecution argued Ovsiannikov must have known he was subject to UK sanctions, because on 7 February 2023 he was applying for them to be lifted and had included his unique ID number and group ID number from his sanctions listing on the form.

He was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to 40 months' imprisonment for each count, to be served concurrently.

The total amount of time he will serve was reduced by the 217 days he spent on curfew, and he will spend up to half of his sentence in custody before he is released on licence.

Ovsiannikov, the former governor of Sevastopol, also served as the Russian Federation's deputy minister for industry and trade before he was dismissed and expelled from the ruling United Russia party in 2020.

Under the asset freeze, Ovsiannikov was not allowed to spend money even on basic necessities. Others were not permitted to assist him to do so.

The jury failed to reach a verdict on the outstanding charge, that Ovsiannikov deliberately avoided sanctions by opening the new bank account.

Julian Capon, head of the CPS's economic organised crime unit, said prosecutors will begin legal action to recover "illegally obtained cash and assets".

He said Ovsiannikov "knew he had been on the UK sanctions list since 2017 but chose to ignore this".

National Crime Agency chief Graeme Biggar said the Ovsiannikov investigation was one of 180 which have aimed to "reduce a criminal threat posed by Putin-linked elites and their enablers since the invasion of Ukraine".