Top Russian Oligarch Enforcer Steps Down from Senior DOJ Role

The official spearheading Justice Department efforts to aid Ukraine by taking superyachts, art, and other luxury items from Russian oligarchs is departing his war-response post, a DOJ spokeswoman said.

Andrew Adams, a veteran New York money-laundering prosecutor tapped last year to lead the high-profile “KleptoCapture” initiative out of DOJ headquarters, is handing over control of the task force to his two deputies.

Adams is in the process of transitioning back to the Manhattan-based US attorney’s office, the spokeswoman added. It’s unclear how long he’ll remain or in what capacity.

Adams’ exit from Justice Department headquarters closes a 16-month chapter that saw him become the public face of DOJ’s attempts to pressure Vladimir Putin by seizing assets of sanctions violators, including Russian elites.

During that time, the department says the task force has “seized, forfeited, or otherwise restrained over $500 million in assets” from Russian oligarchs and other Kremlin supporters, while indicting more than 30 people in multiple countries.

More recently, he’s expanded his team’s focus to scrutinize facilitators—such as overseas investment advisers, hedge funds, law firms and private equity managers—who help hide wealthy Russians’ assets, Adams said in an April interview with Bloomberg News.

When speaking at a New York legal conference in May, Adams defended DOJ’s KleptoCapture probes when a fellow panelist criticized them as aggressively targeting people with no influence on Putin.

“The purpose, of course, is to stymie the Russian war machine more than it is to get inside Putin’s head,” Adams said.

His successors, Michael Khoo and David Lim, have both been leaders of the initiative since its early days.

In addition to leaving KleptoCapture, which was run out of the deputy attorney general’s office, Adams is also stepping down from a separate role he assumed in February as acting deputy assistant attorney general of the National Security Division.

Adams earlier served as co-chair of the money laundering and transnational criminal enterprises unit at the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Prior to joining SDNY he was an associate at Debevoise & Plimpton.