The Royal Court in London has sentenced the former "governor" of Sevastopol, Dmitry Ovsyannikov

Three years and four months in prison - this is the sentence handed down on April 11 by Southwark Crown Court in London to Dmitry Ovsyannikov, the former "governor" of occupied Sevastopol. The court found Ovsyannikov guilty of deliberately violating British sanctions. This was reported by The Interior Ministry.

Ovsyannikov's case is a judicial precedent in the UK.

It is noted that in the UK, Ovsyannikov's sentence is the first sentence for violating anti-Russian sanctions and the first case of prosecution under the British law on combating the evasion of sanctions imposed on Russia, adopted in 2019.

Dmytro Ovsyannikov was reportedly appointed by the occupiers as the "governor" of Sevastopol in the occupied Crimea from 2016 to 2019. Since 2017, Dmytro Ovsyannikov has been under personal sanctions imposed by the UK.

The Southwark Crown Court charged Ovsyannikov with seven counts of violating the sanctions regime, but eventually found him guilty of six counts.

The main evidence in the case was data on financial transactions of the Ovsyannikov family. Dmitry Ovsyannikov, while under sanctions, opened an account with Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) in February 2023, where his wife Katerina transferred about 76 thousand pounds ($100 thousand).

The funds were intended to buy a Mercedes-Benz GLC 300, but the bank froze the account after finding the client's name on the sanctions list. Then Dmitriy's brother Alexey bought the car for £54.5 thousand and insurance for it, and paid for Dmitriy's children's education at the Royal Russell School, a private school, for more than £41 thousand.

Both the purchase of the car and the receipt of the money into the account were illegal: all assets of a person under sanctions must be frozen.

At the same time, Alexey Ovsyannikov, the brother of the main defendant in the criminal case, was also found guilty on two counts, in particular, of paying more than 40 thousand pounds (more than 50 thousand dollars) for the education of Dmitry's two children at a private school. Oleksiy Ovsyannikov was sentenced to 15 months in prison, suspended for 15 months.

The court considered Oleksiy Ovsyannikov to be his brother's accomplice in the criminal case. But it acquitted him of the fact that Alexey bought his brother a car and let his brother use his bank card for purchases.

Dmitry's wife, Katerina Ovsyannikova, was acquitted of all charges.

The public prosecutor emphasized that Dmitry Ovsyannikov knew about the sanctions: in February 2023, he himself appealed to the British authorities with a request to lift them, and in his appeal he indicated his identification data from the sanctions list.

How Ovsyannikov ended up in the UK and became a citizen

The political career of Dmitry Ovsyannikov, a former Russian Deputy Minister of Industry, ended in April 2020 after a scandal at Izhevsk airport where he insulted employees. He was expelled from the United Russia party and dismissed from the civil service. Investigative journalist Andrey Karaulov writes about this investigative journalist Andrey Karaulov.

In December 2020, Ovsyannikov appealed to the EU court to lift sanctions against him. And almost two years later, in October 2022, the European Court of Justice removed him from the list, considering insufficient evidence of his connection to the "destabilization of Ukraine" after he left office.

Ovsyannikov arrived in the UK on February 1, 2023 and settled in his brother's house in Clapham, where his wife and their two children, who attended a private school, already lived.

According to the public prosecutor in the Ovsyannikov case, due to the fact that Dmitry and Alexei's father was born in Bradford (1950) and is a British citizen (his mother is Russian), Dmitry Ovsyannikov received a British passport in January 2023. Oleksiy had had one for a long time. This allowed Dmytro to legalize himself in London. But it did not help to avoid criminal prosecution for previous violations.

As Golos Kryma has already written, Ovsyannikov was arrested in London in January 20124.

It is noted that Dmitry Ovsyannikov attracted the attention of British law enforcement officers with his expenses, because he did not take into account that the restrictions imposed on him prohibit him not only access to assets, but even buying food. Later, the British authorities allowed him to spend 3 thousand pounds a month on basic needs.

The entire Ovsyannikov family, according to BBC News, continues to insist on their innocence, claiming that they were not aware of the bans or their details. However, the court found these arguments unconvincing, especially against the backdrop of Dmitry's active attempts to challenge the sanctions.

Background Dmitry Ovsyannikov was born in Omsk in 1977. He studied at the Sevastopol Instrumentation Institute.

In 2001, he won the Civil Service Personnel Reserve competition. Since then, his career in the Russian government has begun.

He held the position of federal inspector for the Kirov region of Russia. He worked in the management of the plant, headed the Department of Regional Industrial Policy of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia, was Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation.

In 2016-2019, he was appointed by the occupiers as the "governor" of Sevastopol.

In the fall of 2019, he took the post of Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia.

In April 2020, he caused a scandal at the Izhevsk airport, refusing to show his passport and ticket, and insulted security officers.

After being expelled from the United Russia party and dismissed from his post, he left Russia.

Where did Ovsyannikov get the money?

Dmytro Ovsyannikov is remembered by the residents of occupied Sevastopol for a number of scandals, conflicts and unrealized projects.

Sevastopol "deputies" of the city council of the occupation authorities accused Ovsyannikov of trying to privatize strategic facilities. For example, such as Sevmorport."

He was also suspected of fraud with land plots and attempts to take control of the executive branch of the "Control and Accounting Chamber" of the occupied peninsula, which revealed financial irregularities. These included overestimating the cost of construction and reconstruction of a number of facilities, including the reconstruction of Victory Park and the "disappearance" of 2 billion rubles allocated for the construction of the Pivdennye sewage treatment plant.

"Holos Kryma" wrote that these facilities have not yet been built. However, Ovsyannikov has not been formally charged in any criminal case as a result of his activities in Sevastopol. On the contrary, he worked his way up to the position of Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia.

Andrey Karaulov, an investigative journalist, claims that Ovsyannikov's personal sanctions, which he asked to be lifted before the criminal trial began, prevented him from not only living in England in style, but also from doing business in Cyprus.

However, despite the fact that Ovsyannikov clearly had the means to live, on February 19, 2021, he filed a petition with the court for temporary assistance, where he asked to pay his lawyer's expenses, a fact also made public by journalist Karaulov.

The court denied Ovsyannikov's request because he failed to "submit, together with supporting documents, a true and comprehensive picture of his financial situation", which "would allow us to assess the serious and irreparable nature of the financial damage he suffered in Cyprus".

Ovsyannikov explained to the court that, having been deprived of the opportunity to work with Cyprus by sanctions, he could not provide any other evidence of his expenses. But the court upheld its decisiontab=main" target="_blank">wrote that Ovsyannikov was included in the sanctions lists of a number of Western countries precisely after he headed the Russian occupation administration in occupied Sevastopol.