EU court once again lifts ”obsolete” sanctions against Ukraine’s ex-president Yanukovych and his son

Viktor Yanukovych. Archive photo

On Wednesday 20 December, the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld a claim lodged by fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and his son Oleksandr and lifted sanctions imposed against them by the Council of the European Union on 4 March 2021.

Source: European Pravda with reference to the court ruling

Details: The almost identical EU Court judgments state that when the Council took the decision to sanction Viktor and Oleksandr Yanukovych, it failed to properly verify the grounds Ukraine had provided, on which basis the sanctions were imposed.

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The court contends that the Council should also have approached the Ukrainian side to ascertain whether it had infringed the Yanukovyches’ right to effective judicial defence in the criminal proceedings.

In view of this, the court decided to annul the Council’s decision of March 2021 to impose sanctions against Yanukovych and his son, as well as its decision of March 2022 to extend these sanctions for a year.

Background:

• This is not the first such ruling of the EU Court of Justice. It has already annulled decisions that the Council of the EU took in 2019 and 2020. In September 2022, the Council finally removed Viktor and Oleksandr Yanukovych from the sanctions list.
• However, another EU sanctions decision, taken in August 2022, is still effective against the Yanukovyches, and it has not yet been appealed, meaning they are still subject to a ban on owning assets in the European Union and entering its territory.
• In recent years, the European Union has begun to lift restrictions on officials who were in power during Yanukovych’s presidency due to insufficient evidence against them from Ukrainian investigators. Seven out of 18 people remain on the sanctions list, including Viktor Yanukovych himself.
• To maintain EU sanctions against individuals from the former president’s orbit, progress needs to be made in investigating the cases against them in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

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