President Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a decree removing Russian citizens Alexey and Dmitry Ananyev, who are major sponsors of the Russian Orthodox Church, from the sanctions list.
This was announced in a comment to DS by the director of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, political scientist Vadim Denisenko.
According to him, the Ananyev brothers are among the largest sponsors of the Russian Orthodox Church. So, they were involved in organizing the stay of the relics of St. Andrew the First-Called in Russia and Ukraine in 2003.
"It was the church that asked Zelensky to lift the sanctions," the political scientist noted.
As "DS" reported, on March 23, President Volodymyr Zelensky put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council, which, in particular, excluded Oleksiy and Dmytro Ananyev from the sanctions list. Both were owners of the Russian Promsvyazbank. Sanctions against them were imposed on March 19, 2019, for a period of three years.
It is noteworthy that the other day the Basmanny District Court of Moscow granted the request of the GSU SKR for the absentee arrest of accomplices of the former owners of Promsvyazbank (PSB) Dmytro and Oleksiy Ananyevs - Batraz Pliev and a citizen of Ukraine Ivan Podluzhny, accused of embezzling the bank's funds in the amount of more than 87.2 billion rubles.
As the Russian newspaper Kommersant writes on March 24, according to investigators, in early December 2017, Brothers Dmytro and Oleksiy Ananyevs (put on the international wanted list), as heads of the board and board of Directors of PSB, created an organized group to steal funds from the bank, due to the fact that the Central Bank during the audit revealed numerous violations related to lending.
In December 2020, the District Court of Limassol (Cyprus) seized the assets of former co-owners of Promsvyazbank Dmitry and Alexey Ananyev, as well as their wives Lyudmila and Daria in the amount of up to € 267 million, writes the Russian Forbes.
It should be noted that Dmytro Ananyev, in particular, was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the spring of 2006, he was a member of the organizing committee for the stay of the relics of the Apostle Andrew the first-called in Russia.