Oil tycoon Shvidler loses appeal over UK's Russian sanctions
Russian-born Shvidler, who is a British and U.S. citizen, was sanctioned over his association with former Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, plus his former position as a director of London-listed Russian steel producer Evraz (EVRE.L), opens new tab.
Shvidler – whose net worth is estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.6 billion – appealed to the Supreme Court, with his lawyers arguing that others with greater involvement in business of importance to Russia were not sanctioned, citing BP's (BP.L), opens new tab previous joint venture with Rosneft (ROSN.MM), opens new tab.
The Supreme Court rejected Shvidler's appeal by a four-to-one majority in a ruling that Shvidler said "brings me back to the USSR". The ruling also maintains Britain's 100% record of defending its Russian sanctions in court.
Shvidler said in a statement that no British companies or business people with ties to Russian state-owned companies have been sanctioned, adding that Britain's sanctions were "more about cheap virtue-signalling for purely political purposes".
"There may be little public sympathy for me, as a wealthy US/UK businessman, but this judgment applies to all who face state power," he added.
Britain's Foreign Office, which has overseen the sanctioning of more than 1,700 individuals or entities since Russia's invasion, welcomed the ruling "and the message it sends about the strength of the UK sanctions regime".
Shvidler had said British sanctions have destroyed his business and disrupted his and his family's lives. His lawyers previously said he has no involvement in or influence over Russian politics and had not even been to Russia since attending the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin's funeral in 2007.
But the majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the sanctions struck a fair balance between Shvidler's rights and the aims of the sanctions regime.
In the majority's judgment, Judges Philip Sales and Vivien Rose said sanctioning Shvidler "sends a clear signal to people in Mr Shvidler's position that they would be wise to distance themselves from Russian business now".
But Judge George Leggatt, in a strident dissenting ruling, said Britain's "flimsy reasons" for sanctioning Shvidler did not justify the "serious invasion of liberty" sanctions entailed.
He noted BP's profitable joint venture with Rosneft, having two members on its board, and said it was irrational to only sanction Shvidler if "sanctioning an individual for working as a director of a company which had invested in the Russian extractives sector was thought likely to contribute to achieving the purposes" of British sanctions. BP declined to comment.
Maia Cohen-Lask, a partner at Corker Binning, said the Supreme Court's ruling was "a huge blow not just for Mr Shvidler but for any person who has been sanctioned despite their lack of any links to the Putin regime".
The Supreme Court also dismissed a separate appeal brought by Russian businessman Sergei Naumenko, whose 44 million euro ($51 million) superyacht was detained in London.
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However, while the fact I was being lied about got under my skin, the nature of the insult itself was water off a duck's back. Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters. © Nicola Sturgeon 2025. Extracted from Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon (Macmillan £28), published on Thursday. To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members. Nicola Sturgeon discusses her memoir with Cathy Newman at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London SE1, on August 29;
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Another day, another scandal in Britain's collapsing public sector. Today's concerns the country's courts. A BBC investigation has turned up an internal report, not for public circulation, from HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) about an IT bug that deleted or hid information on hundreds of pending cases. The problem itself was bad enough: Britain's state IT capacity is very poor, worse than many comparable nations. Things get deleted or disappear; vital information is stolen or hacked. The administrators of these systems are so often simply not up to it. But how this disaster was handled appears to be even worse. This particular software error, found in 'case-management software' variously called Judicial Case Manager, MyHMCTS or CCD, according to the BBC, meant that some data was not visible – including medial information, contact details and evidence at issue – in case files used in court. The report seen by the BBC said that the tribunal dealing with child support and benefits appears to have been the most affected. But the problem went further, including the family courts, employment tribunals, civil claims and probate – essentially most of the legal system to do with the trials of ordinary life. This is all scandalous and dreadful enough. It's not surprising, because the gears of state always stick and scream and things in the public sector are rarely done efficiently and well. But there's one thing that's even more damaging than the routine ineptitude of the state: all of this appears to have been hidden from view until the BBC happened to get its hands on secret internal documents. You were never meant to hear about any of this. The IT problem itself was concealed; the lawyers and judges who likely lost access to vital information – who argued and decided cases on incomplete information – were never told about it. The people whose cases were affected were not informed. Even the eventual report assessing the damages of this error was also concealed. This is the dire nature of justice and life in Britain. The software was in use for years, sources within the HMCTS told the BBC, but if objections to its problems were ever raised, they were ignored. The internal report seen by the BBC said that data problems were discussed from 2019 onwards and definitively discovered in 2023. Higher-ups just didn't want to know, let alone to fix things. And when the problems grew so large as to be unignorable, the whole thing was hidden from the public and from everyone remotely affected. Internal emails seen by the BBC seemed more interested in the 'severe reputational impact to HMCTS' than anything else. This is what the British state looks like; this is how it operates. It's a culture of ineptitude with the bureaucracy protecting itself against all transparency, against every attempt to hold the system and its people to account. The primary purpose of the British state is waging a continual campaign to conceal from the public how badly we are governed. How many more stories like this one are there? There's no way for you to know – they've all been well covered up.
