On March 5, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in the case (T-249/22) of Alexander Ponomarenko, former chairman of the Board of Directors of Sheremetyevo Airport. Forbes magazine estimates the businessman’s fortune at $2 billion.
Alexander Ponomarenko was included in the EU sanctions list in 2022. The justification for the sanctions stated that Ponomarenko was “a Russian oligarch, chairman of the board of directors of Sheremetyevo International Airport. [He] maintains close ties with other oligarchs associated with Vladimir Putin, as well as with Sergey Aksyonov, the head of the so-called “Republic of Crimea.”
In 2023, the European Union extended sanctions against Ponomarenko. The EU documents stated that the businessman was “a former chairman of the board of directors of Sheremetyevo International Airport, with whom he is still associated as a shareholder. (He is) associated with Arkady Rotenberg, a well-known Russian businessman with close personal ties to President Putin. He is involved in financing the palace near Gelendzhik, which is personally used by President Putin.”
In court, Ponomarenko’s side argued that the grounds for the sanctions were taken from “tabloid media” used to damage his reputation. In addition, according to Ponomarenko’s lawyers, he was not involved in the financial flows of financing the Gelendzhik complex and “therefore, he believes that he did not provide any support to Mr. Putin or other decision makers as of the date of adoption of the initial acts and in September 2022.”
However, the court eventually refused to lift the sanctions against Alexander Ponomarenko. The court’s decision states that the connection to the Gedenjik palace follows from a number of media publications, including an article on the BBC website, an article on the Novaya Gazeta website, as well as the Putin’s Palace page published on Wikipedia.
