Putin’s friend Prigozhin asks U.S. Treasury department to lift all sanctions imposed on him
Evgeny Prigozhin, a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, appealed to the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control with a request to lift sanctions imposed on him, announced the press service of Concord Group owned by Prigozhin, TASS reports.
"The press service informs that today, June 18, Yevgeny Prigozhin appealed to the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury with a request to lift sanctions (remove of the applicant from the list of specially designated persons). It is also requested to provide him and his lawyers with the materials of the administrative case, based on which he was included in the sanctions list," the statement reads.
Prigozhin said sanctions against him were imposed "unreasonably, with abuse of authority and based on arbitrary unpredictable actions that violate constitutional principles." He added that sanctions restrict his rights and freedoms.
In April, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 16 organizations and 16 individuals allegedly linked to Russian interference in the United States election. The sanctions included several individuals and companies associated with Prigozhin, as well as several Pakistani nationals that allegedly helped the Russian companies to circumvent the U.S. sanctions. Prigozhin himself has been on U.S. sanctions lists since 2016.
Yevgeny Prigozhin is known as “Putin’s chef” since, amongst other things, he deals with food supplies for the Russian authorities. The businessman met the Russian president in 2011 when, as the owner of an elite restaurant, he served Vladimir Putin and former French President Jacques Chirac.