Russian Billionaire Says Finnish Court Dodged Sanctions Issue

Russian billionaire Boris Rotenberg says a Finnish court’s decision to block his access to Nordic banks failed to address the fundamental legal question to which he’d sought an answer.

Rotenberg, an associate of President Vladimir Putin, is on the U.S. sanctions list. But because of his status as a dual citizen of Finland and Russia, the oligarch says banks based in Europe should be free to handle his transactions. The four Nordic banks he tried to use disagreed, so he sued them. This week, the Helsinki District Court ruled in their favor.

But the court failed to make clear ...