{"id":1186283,"date":"2026-09-04T15:49:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T15:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1186283\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T15:49:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T15:49:23","slug":"eu-plan-to-blacklist-hundreds-more-russians-risks-new-boom-in-litigation-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1186283\/","title":{"rendered":"EU plan to blacklist hundreds more Russians risks new boom in litigation \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some lawyers foresee a new boom in Russian litigation at the EU courts in Luxembourg, as Europe prepares to backlist hundreds or even thousands of new names.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Russian appetite for anti-sanctions lawsuits has not faded, despite very few of the top oligarchs or politicians having managed to get off the list in the past four and a half years, attorneys said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs far as I am concerned, we are not seeing individuals subject to restrictive measures abandoning their appeals before the European courts. They systematically challenge renewals [of blacklists naming them]\u201d, said Thierry Bontinck, <a href=\"https:\/\/euobserver.com\/17673\/eu-lawyers-for-russia-making-good-money\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/euobserver.com\/17673\/eu-lawyers-for-russia-making-good-money\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a leading EU sanctions barrister<\/a> in Brussels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bontinck\u2019s clients have included ex-Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, Kremlin-family industrialist Oleg Deripaska, and Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire and personal friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBoth foreign companies \u2013 Indian, Chinese \u2013 and Russian individuals or entities continue to challenge the restrictive measures,\u201d Bontinck told EUobserver on Thursday (3 September).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cRussians are still litigating,\u201d agreed Paris-based EU sanctions barrister William Juli\u00e9, who has represented Azerbaijani-Russian oil baron Farkhad Akhmedov, Russian tech magnate Arkady Voloz, and media billionaire Gregory Berezkin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere is no sign of any diminishing appetite to do so \u2013 and that is something to be welcomed,\u201d said Juli\u00e9, because, he added, lawsuits stress-tested the legality of the EU sanctions regime and the rule of law in Europe more broadly speaking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The EU has so far imposed visa bans and asset freezes on some 3,000 mostly Russian individuals and entities for contributing to Putin&#8217;s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The vast majority are mid-ranking politicians, officials, and military commanders, who do not have the means to sue the EU even if they wanted to, given that a sanctions case can cost up to \u20ac500,000 in EU lawyers&#8217; fees.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/euobserver.com\/17673\/eu-lawyers-for-russia-making-good-money\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"370\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/136a118a318cc88914979de230945648-600x370.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But litigious Russians, some of whom lost yachts and mansions in Europe, Russian firms, and Russian accomplices in Belarus, Moldova, and Iran (in what Juli\u00e9 called the &#8220;Russia cluster&#8221;) still filed 84 out of the 125 new sanctions law cases before the EU&#8217;s General Court in 2025, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some lawyers foresee a new boom in Russian litigation at the EU courts in Luxembourg, as Europe prepares&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1186284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,218484,220440,218481,220438,218479,218482,220439,218480,218483],"class_list":["post-1186283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-identifier24","tag-identifier29","tag-identifier4308","tag-namerule-of-law","tag-namerussia","tag-nameukraine","tag-termcoderule-of-law","tag-termcoderussia","tag-termcodeukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117213566955148919","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1186284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}