On February 24, on the anniversary of the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the US Treasury and State Departments announced a new package of sanctions against supporters of Putin's regime. It includes 200 people and organizations. Among them are several individuals featured in recent investigations by the Anti-Corruption Foundation. This shows yet again that our investigations and lists of warmongers are an important reference point when it comes to imposing sanctions.
One of those blacklisted is Anna Surovikina, the wife of Sergei Surovikin, one of the commanders of Russian troops in Ukraine. Several companies associated with her have also been sanctioned. There is one among them that deserves special attention. This is Argus SFK, a sawmill in the Sverdlovsk Oblast. The company came to the attention of journalists in 2011 because of machinations with state funding. Leonid Volkov, then a city councilman and now president of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, told journalists about them. It was already clear at that time that the unprofitable sawmill was just a front for some financial schemes. And last year we finally found out what it was all about.
The bank documents of Argus SFK showed that in 2020-2021 the company received loans amounting to more than 104 million rubles from Stroytransgaz, a company owned by Gennady Timchenko, Putin's closest friend. Stroytransgaz owns an exclusive contract to develop phosphate mines in Syria. For a long time they were not under the control of the Syrian authorities, but in the spring of 2017 the mines were liberated by Russian troops under the command of Surovikin. By the summer, Timchenko was launching his business there. And now it seems that Surovikin is being paid "tips" for that through his wife's sawmill. We covered all this in our investigation last November.
The justification for the sanctions against Argus SFK says that the company is affiliated with the sanctioned Timchenko enterprises. This directly confirms that the U.S. State Department was guided by our investigation.
The other figures on the new sanctions list are Deputy Prime Minister for Social Policy Tatyana Golikova and her husband Viktor Khristenko. The latter had long ago resigned from the civil service, which is why he had not been sanctioned by any country so far. This helped Golikova and Khristenko's family hide their foreign assets. Among their assets are a private jet, golf clubs, and luxury villas in Spain, Portugal, and France. We talked about this in our investigation released last October. Thanks to it, this kleptocrat has finally been sanctioned
The sanctions also affected Alexander Udodov, the former son-in-law of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Capital management and real estate companies associated with him were also subject to restrictions. The ACF found out that Udodov helped Mishustin's family buy six apartments in New York between 2009 and 2010, which is essentially a bribe. Moreover, as our investigation showed, Udodov made a fortune from tax fraud at a time when Mishustin was head of the Federal Tax Service. This fact was cited by the Treasury Department as the basis for sanctions against Udodov, which confirms that they relied on our investigations.
This once again emphasizes the importance of our work in investigating the crimes of Putin's officials and oligarchs. We will continue this work and will also be expanding our list of warmongers who support Putin's regime and should be subject to sanctions as soon as possible.