US Treasury Kremlin List of "big, bad oligarchs" is a simple copy of the Kremlin phone directory

 February 1 , 2017 - FRN - 

Politnavigator -  translated by Inessa Sinchougova   

The so-called "Kremlin list", published by the US Treasury, is a rewritten Kremlin telephone directory and the Forbes list, stated the Russian State Duma deputy Valery Rashkin.

"The US Ministry of Finance has included 96 people from the Forbes list and from the telephone directory of the Kremlin administration. And they consider this to be some stunning list of oligarchs. Of course, before this document, it was hard to imagine that all these people might be wealthy," Rashkin wrote.

Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev, agrees. He explains the lack of credibility of the list by saying that the US intelligence services have despaired in finding "the promised and, most importantly, provable compromising evidence on Russian politicians".

Nevertheless, the senator believes that the list will spoil Russia's relations with the US for a long time.

"Political paranoia, as it turns out, is very difficult to treat, especially when the patient does not recognize they have a disease. The consequences are extremely toxic and will undermine the prospects for cooperation for years to come. Normal relations are no longer there, at least until the current generation of politicians in Washington moves on, Kosachev wrote in his Facebook.

A well-known Russian TV presenter Olga Skabeeva called the "Kremlin report" a hack-work.

"What was the US Treasury engaged in for 180 days? It's some kind of hack-work. Dvorkovich (he, too, is on the list) says that the "Kremlin report" of the US Treasury is similar to a beginner's book "Who is Who in Russian Politics". 

The "Kremlin report" features 6 major Russian businessmen, as well as 114 politicians and officials - people believed to be close to the Russian leadership. In particular, the head of the Russian government Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The list was prepared in accordance with the law "On Countering America's Enemies through Sanctions," which was adopted in the US in the summer of 2017. It does not automatically imply sanctions against the persons mentioned, but restrictive measures may be imposed against them by the US in the future.

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Inessa Sinchougova is an Editor and Journalist at FRN, as well as a research fellow and translator of the Belgrade based think-tank, the Center for Syncretic Studies. She was educated at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), in the field of Political Science and was previously employed in Marketing and Communications Strategy for a Multi-National Corporation. She runs a popular YouTube channel for translations of key Russian Foreign Policy figures and appears regularly on other alternative media channels. Currently, she is attempting to migrate to Dtube, but the platform is having some issues! If you like her work, you can support her Patreon here.