The US Department of Justice has indicted Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who is subject to sanctions for Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, for violating the sanctions to utilize US financial services, Reuters reports.
The DOJ alleges Deripaska sold a California music studio in 2019 for $3.1 million, using a naturalized Russian who lives in New Jersey named Olga Shriki, who is also charged in the case, to front the operation. Shriki and another defendant, Natalia Bardakova, arranged for Deripaska’s lover, Ekaterina Voronina, to travel to the US in 2020 and earlier this year to give birth to two children fathered by Deripaska so the children could have US citizenship.