EU General Court rejects Beloglazov’s Russia de-listing case & interprets “facilitating sanctions circumvention”

21 July 2026

Beloglazov v Council (T-492/24). The EU General Court has rejected Dimitry Beloglazov’s application to annul his designation under Article 3(1)(h)(i) of Regulation (EU) 269/2014 for facilitating the circumvention of EU Russia sanctions. The judgment contains commentary on EU sanctions “circumvention” and “facilitating a circumvention”.

The court upheld the EU’s case that Mr Beloglazov had facilitated a sanctions circumvention by engaging in a scheme in Russia to buy Oleg Deripaska’s shareholding in International LLC Rasperia which held 28.5 million frozen shares in Austrian company Strabag and thereby remove Deripaska from the ownership to make it easier to sell the shares and circumvent the EU asset freeze.

The court rejected his challenge to the legality of the designation criterion “facilitating infringements of the prohibition on circumvention” as breaching the principles of legal certainty and proportionality and said the criterion means “making easier an operation whose object or effect is to circumvent” sanctions by assisting or lending support to its realisation.

The court also rejected Mr. Beloglazov’s application to annul his designation.  He had argued that the transaction was contingent on obtaining a sanctions licence so was not a circumvention, had no EU nexus, and that he had (successfully) applied to annul the sale of Rasperia shares at the time of the listings. The court said it was enough that Mr. Beloglazov had an objective intention to get around the EU asset freeze, and that it may be necessary for a reasonable period to pass after the end of complex schemes for the Commission to conclude that sanctions are no longer justified.