On March 13, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department excluded Russian Boris Gaykovich and Nikita Kovalevsky (a.k.a. Kovalevskij Nikita Gennadievitch; a.k.a. Muravjov, Nikita), who have Russian and Finnish citizenship, from the sanctions list. The sanctions have also been lifted from the Finnish companies GCH Finland OY, Unicum Trade OY, ACEX OY and Quantlog OY.
Kovalevsky and Gaykovich were sanctioned in 2020. Then OFAC reported that Gaikovich was the deputy general director of the St. Petersburg NPP PT Okeanos, which provided diving equipment to the FSB.
Kovalevsky was also included in the sanctions list as he controlled the Finnish company Optima Freight, which was accused of violating US sanctions and supplying diving equipment.
“Nikita Kovalevskij, and his company, Optima Freight, through an illicit scheme, violated U.S. export laws in the acquisition of sensitive, controlled U.S. maritime technologies,” Stacey R. Moy, Special Agent in Charge of the Counterintelligence Division, FBI Washington Field Office, said at the time . “The FBI remains committed to aggressively investigate and stop Russia from covertly pilfering U.S. innovation.”
