In London, the court decided to ease the restrictions imposed on the bank accounts of Russian businessman Pyotr Aven. From these accounts, the funds were spent on paying expenses in his London mansion.
This information is provided by Bloomberg.
According to the agency, the court gave permission for the sanctioned Russian billionaire to pay for “basic needs.” Aven’s lawyers asked to completely unfreeze his bank accounts. The National Crime Agency (NCA), which decided to freeze Aven’s accounts, proposed leaving the current restrictions unchanged in order to ensure a comprehensive investigation in the UK and other countries.
As it became known during the court session, since March 15, Aven’s basic needs have been paid by his wife Ekaterina. Aven’s expenses for each month, according to a Bloomberg source, amount to 140 thousand pounds. Most of this money goes towards protecting and insuring the art collection, which is valued at £300 million. After the introduction of sanctions restrictions, Petr Aven was allowed to spend no more than 2,500 pounds per month on himself, a TASS interlocutor close to the billionaire’s entourage said in May.
The UK National Crime Agency has frozen funds on Aven’s accounts in connection with a criminal investigation into the evasion of sanctions imposed on him after the well-known events in Ukraine.
In May, agency employees conducted a search in Aven’s house, during which 30,000 pounds were seized. According to Bloomberg, investigators also came up with a trail of more than three million pounds, which were transferred from Austria to the UK in the hours before sanctions were imposed on the businessman.
