By KYIV. Jan 3 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The assets of the Russian oligarch worth almost UAH 800 million, seized according to the materials of the National Police, were transferred to ARMA, according to the official website of the National Police of Ukraine on Tuesday.
"We are talking about tens of thousands of tonnes of iron ore, which was intended to be delivered by sea to Russian military-industrial complex enterprises, including rocket-building ones," the police said.
The officers of Odessa police’s investigative department in one of the ports found 50,000 tonnes of iron ore. As it turned out, the batch of minerals belongs to the company of a Russian oligarch from the inner circle of the Kremlin political elite. The name of the oligarch in the National Police is not specified.
During the investigation, it was established that the ore was delivered to the port in January 2022 for subsequent shipment to industrial facilities in Russia. However, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of the territory of Ukraine, the oligarch, the beneficial owner, was subject to sanctions by the National Security and Defense Council, the United States and the European Union. The owners began to look for ways to take the ore out of Ukraine. In order to hide the real destination, they planned to send iron ore by sea to companies in different parts of the world that are part of the holding of the Russian oligarch, and then to enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex, including the rocket industry, the National Police press service said.
As part of criminal proceedings over 50,000 tonnes of iron ore in the amount of UAH 800 million. arrested. The property of the Russian oligarch was transferred to ARMA for commercial use. The proceeds will go to the needs of the Armed Forces.
At the end of December, the State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said clandestine warehouses with more than 160,000 tonnes of Ukrainian iron ore, owned by the company of Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, were discovered in several seaports of Ukraine, and the property was seized. According to the SBU, iron ore was discovered on the territory of several seaports of Ukraine, and the total value of the seized minerals is about UAH 2 billion.
