The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control removed eight Russia-linked entries from its Specially Designated Nationals list on June 29, all connected to Turkey. The deletions covered two Turkish nationals and six Turkish companies, among them CNC machine tool manufacturers, a hydraulics and pneumatics firm, and an electronics trading company, all previously sanctioned under Executive Order 14024.
The two individuals removed were Gurhan Aydin and Recep Cetin Aydin, both from Konya, Turkey. Gurhan Aydin had been linked on the SDN list to AYTT CNC Takim Tezgahlari, a machine tools company that was also among the six entities delisted. The other removed companies include Megasan Elektronik Ticaret ve Sanayi, SSGCTM CNC Takim Tezgahlari, Minyon Kesici Takimlar Makine, and Hidropark Hidrolik Pnomatik.
That June 29 action came five days after a separate OFAC delisting round on June 24, which struck seven Russian individuals and two dry cargo vessels from the same list. Notable among those removed were Ivan Potanin, son of billionaire Vladimir Potanin and a key owner of Norilsk Nickel, and Mikhail Klyukin, a supervisory board member at Sovcombank. Three additional individuals removed in that round, Irina Kremleva, Viktor Nikolaev, and Nadezhda Cherkasova, had been linked to Otkritie Bank.
The two vessels delisted on June 24, the Vyacheslav Arshinov and the Gennady Yegorov, are general cargo ships sailing under the Russian flag that had been linked to the Joint Stock Company State Transportation Leasing Company. Rounding out that earlier wave were German Bilous, Maxim Smirnov, a Turkish elevator company called IDA Asansor Sanayii ve Ticaret, and a Turkish consulting and trading firm, Dein Danismanlik Pazarlama.
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Treasury cited termination of official duties as the basis for at least some of the individual removals in the June 24 batch, specifically in cases involving former executives and supervisory board members tied to the Otkritie financial group.
The back-to-back removals stand in contrast to the European Union’s posture on Russia sanctions. At its June 18 Brussels summit, the EU broke with its longstanding practice of renewing Russia sanctions every six months, instead locking in a twelve-month extension. The EU Council is expected to formally approve a new sanctions package in the coming weeks.
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