A total of 14 Russian nationals have been targeted in Britain's new list of international anti-corruption sanctions, the Foreign Office announced on its website. The newly updated document also contains citizens of other countries, the ministry's website reads.
Among those who have been named are officials, businessmen, and bank owners who, as claimed by the UK Foreign Office, were involved in a corruption scheme which misappropriated $230 million of state property in December 2007.
Earlier on Monday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab outlined a number of rules to parliament with regards to international anti-corruption sanctions.
Essentially, London is set to wage a war against corruption schemes around the world by freezing the assets of those it considers to be involved in them, and banning the people concerned from entering the UK and channelling money through the country.
The foreign secretary vowed thereby to stop corrupt individuals using the UK as a safe haven for dirty money.
The global anti-corruption sanction list closely followed the global human rights sanctions regime introduced in July 2020, which has resulted in the UK imposing economic restrictions on 78 individuals and entities involved in what the UK sees as serious human rights violations, including those from Myanmar, Belarus, China and Russia.
After London added three Russian nationals and one unit of the Russian National Guard to the sanctions list over purported "egregious human rights violations" on 10 December, Moscow hit back saying it reserved the right to respond in kind, dubbing the move a political "demarche".