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OTTAWA — Nikita Anatolyevich Mishin, a Russian billionaire Canada says is an oligarch associated with Vladimir Putin, is suing the federal government to be removed from the country’s sanctions list.
In a lawsuit filed last week, Mishin argues that his addition in 2024 to Canada’s list of people sanctioned due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “an error” and that he opposes Putin’s war.
Now, he’s asking a Federal Court judge to order the federal government to reconsider his multiple requests to be removed from Canada’s sanction list, which he has previously said unduly impose consequences on him “akin to criminal penalties.”
“These include the denial of access to ordinary services from banks and other financial institutions, exclusion from employment opportunities, severe reputational damage and the inability to travel to Canada,” Mishin argued in an earlier lawsuit linked to his efforts to be removed from the sanctions list.
Mishin is a Russian billionaire who made his fortune as the co-founder of Russia’s largest train operator, Globaltrans. According to media reports at the time, Mishin sold his shares in the publicly-traded company in January 2024, one month before he was sanctioned by Canada.
According to government documents filed by Mishin to Federal Court, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) added him to the sanctions list due in part to his attending the 2019 Gaidar Forum meeting, “a yearly conference organized and funded by the Russian regime”, along with other senior Russian entrepreneurs and political figures who are also sanctioned by Canada.
GAC also pointed to his attending a meeting of he Moscow State University Board of Trustees, where he was pictured with another sanctioned Russian individual, to justify maintaining him on the sanctions list.
“Your involvement in these senior-level meetings affiliated to the Russian government, following your relocation to the United Kingdom, illustrates your continued alignment with the Russian regime and signals support for and complicity with the regime’s actions,” reads the January 7, 2025, letter from GAC to Mishin explaining why he was originally sanctioned.
Mishin appealed the decision to GAC and asked the department and then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly to reconsider.
“The educational events occurred six years ago and three years before the invasion of Ukraine, during a time when Western governments and institutions, including those of Canada, continued to engage full-heartedly with Russia. These educational events had nothing to do with supporting the Russian regime or its invasion in Ukraine,” Mishin’s lawyers told GAC in early January 2025.
Two months later, GAC refused his appeal. With its refusal, GAC appears to have considered that the billionaire’s business success indirectly helped finance Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to an excerpt of the March 10 letter cited in Mishin’s lawsuit.
“Following the dissolution of the USSR, you accumulated substantial influence and wealth in a sector of critical importance to the Russian economy, which in turn generated substantial revenue for the Russian government, allowing the regime to finance its aggression and eventual illegal incursion into neighbouring sovereign states, including Ukraine,” reads the excerpt.
GAC also cited connections with Alexei Mordashov, a Russian oligarch and one of the country’s richest men, as well as Igor Levitin, a close political advisor to Putin, to justify keeping him on Canada’s sanctions list.
“Operating in the Russian oligarchic structure, your success would have been intrinsically linked to your close professional and personal ties to other members of the Russian elite, notably Mr. Mordashov and Mr. Levitin, and the access these relationships provided to President Putin himself,” reads a portion of GAC’s refusal letter to Mishin, per his lawsuit.
Mishin’s lawyers argue in their lawsuit that they presented evidence to the minister their client is not an associate of either Mordashov or Levitin, but that it was rejected.
They also said that GAC’s claim about Mishin’s ties to the Russian oligarchy is a completely new argument that were never raised when he was originally added to the sanctions list. Thus, the billionaire should be provided a fair opportunity to counter those claims.
Furthermore, his lawyers claimed in a letter to GAC in early 2025 that Mishin’s loyalties “lie with the West” when it comes to Russia’s war with Ukraine and that the billionaire is now a British citizen living in London.
“As explained and evidenced in detail in our letter of October 11, 2024, including in the form of reference letters from numerous respectable British citizens, Mr Mishin is very clearly not aligned with the ‘Russian regime’ and is strongly opposed to the war in Ukraine. We do not repeat this material here but are surprised that GAC does not appear to have engaged with this evidence,” reads the letter sent to GAC in January 2025 and filed in court.
Neither Global Affairs Canada, Foreign Minister Anita Anand’s office nor Mishin’s lawyers responded to a request for comment by deadline.
National Post
cnardi@postmedia.com
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