The department also unveiled additional measures meant to neutralize Russian money laundering and disrupt online criminal networks.
The Justice Department said on Wednesday that it had charged a Russian oligarch with violating U.S. sanctions and unveiled additional measures intended to counter Russian money laundering and disrupt online criminal networks in an effort to enforce financial penalties on Moscow. The moves came as the United States has ratcheted up pressure on the Kremlin and some of the wealthiest Russians in light of growing evidence of atrocities in Ukraine and as Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the United States was helping its European partners investigate potential war crimes. The oligarch, Konstantin Malofeev,47, is widely considered one of Russia’s most influential business moguls — he is said to have deep ties to President Vladimir V. Putin — and is among the more prominent conservatives in the country’s Kremlin-allied elite. (The indictment renders his surname as Malofeyev.) The actions demonstrated the reach of a task force created last month to find and seize the assets of wealthy Russians who violate U.S. sanctions on Russia, and the penalties appeared meant to enforce the far-reaching economic sanctions that the United States has imposed along with European allies.
