The United States Department of Justice has investigated very few cases of violations of sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014. At the same time, the agency took a tougher position on this issue only after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
This is reported by Politico.
The publication analyzed the Ministry of Justice's use of sanctions, export controls and other restrictions aimed at Russia for the almost ten-year war against Ukraine. The research includes hundreds of pages of court records and other materials, as well as interviews with a dozen former US officials.
The study says the White House has imposed several rounds of sanctions against Russia since 2014 over its war against Ukraine.
The Ministry of Justice during the presidency of Barack Obama and Donald Trump did not give priority to the prosecution of violators of sanctions related to the military invasion. At the same time, the department did not prosecute many cases until the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The publication revealed 14 criminal cases from January 2014 to February 2022. But some of these cases were only tangentially connected to Ukraine — if at all — and rooted in export control violations and other alleged crimes committed before the 2014 invasion, and may or may not have been war-related.
In the months since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, the number of such persecutions in the US has increased dramatically. Prosecutors have opened at least 18 cases with indictments or charges against at least 39 people. However, the documents show, these cases are often based on the suspects' alleged wrongdoing years before, meaning they could potentially have been prosecuted sooner.
The publication notes that Washington and the West in general have been too lenient towards Russia for too long, especially when it came to Ukraine.
At the same time, the US Justice Ministry rejects the idea that prosecutions could hinder dictator Vladimir Putin's long-term ambition to join Ukraine to Russia.
In particular, former U.S. prosecutors say they were hampered by a lack of cooperation from other countries, even allies such as Britain, when they wanted to pursue sanctions violators.