what would the most effective sanctions look like if they were to be imposed on vladimir putin? thea;r be imposed on vladimir putin? they robabl be imposed on vladimir putin? they probably should be imposed on vladimir putin? tie: probably should not be be imposed on vladimir putin? ti9:1: probably should not be widespread sanctions against the russian people but vladimir putin is arguably the richest man in the world has stolen and enormous amount of money from russian people and that money is held in the name of oligarchs and oligarch trustees don t hold that money in russia they hold it in the last and banks in the uk and new york and switzerland and various places and show the best way to stopping putin from all of this terrible stuff he s doing is to go after his money in the and the best way to go after his money is to freeze the assets of the oligarch trustees and that something that s entirely possible, possible and already in law and out of the major countries where putin ke
in the name of people he trusts, the trustees so you have to sanction the oligarchs and the billionaires on the forbes list and the united states will go after oligarchs and family members. yes, they did, a few but not nearly enough in order to really show putin that we re serious. i mean, there s all sorts of images of private jets and boats, yachts floating around the world with these oligarchs who are untouched. so this has to be done in an absolutely meticulous manner to go after putin s oligarch trustees and to go after all of the people that hold his money in the west and for what it s worth, almost all of the money of russia has been accumulated in the hands of a very small number of people and this is an enormous piece of leverage that we have in the west if we decide to use it, but it hasn t been used properly yet and there has to be a proper filling in the blanks, addressing the devil in
human rights offenders. those sanctions have a lot of bite. good to have you with us this morning. great to be here. you know about sanctions in russia. you know which sanctions hurt the most. by the way, the act certainly has worked in many respects. the u.s. has tried sanctions for seven years since russia invaded and annexed crimea, and it s still there. what of the menu of these sanctions that the biden administration is considering right now do you consider most potentially impactful? you have to understand that putin is not a normal head of state. he s a man who has accumulated tons if not hundreds of billions of dollars in his time as president. and he doesn t keep that money in his own name. he keeps it in the name of people who he trusts, they call them oligarch trustees. we have an extremely easy way of getting them to stop doing bad
he s got a long list of things he wants to accomplish, and it doesn t cost him much to put a bunch of troops there so he has a negotiating position. because everybody is so afraid of going to war with russia, which i don t think he has any intention of doing, the world will basically say, yes, the western world, i should say, biden and the germmans and the eu and so on, will say what s on your wish list, we ll grant it. that s how he operates. to that end, bill, president biden going in with what we saw from former president trump, the important meeting yesterday with european leaders, making sure there s a unified front. but at the end of the day, how much leverage does joe biden have right now? well, certainly he has all the leverage in the world because, as i said, putin is a very rich man. he keeps his money with oligarch trustees, and that money is held in the west. that s his achilles heel. we could stop him cold if we
oligarchs, after his money. you can sanction them to say you can t travel here. what you are talking about is something more ambitious which would be maybe exposing the extent of their foreign assets. freezing their assets because vladimir putin doesn t have any money in his own name, oligarch trustees. if you freeze their money are freezing vladimir putin s money and no more chemical weapons after that. he doesn t have any money in his own name. he depend on their offices. and on our weakness not to go after them. weiss and the west going after that giving many depredations from lamivudine. i m telling your audience and every other audience if you want to get p go after the oligarchs. i can t believe for example the western spy services, mi 5,