EU court lifts sanctions on MP Serhiy Kliuyev - media

The decision was made pursuant to a complaint filed by Kliuyev in 2015, which concerned a wave of sanctions that was in force until March 2016. At the same time, during the consideration of the complaint it was supplemented with documents from new waves of sanctions, including the last one, introduced in March 2017. The grounds for restrictive measures have not changed over this period - MP Serhiy Kliuyev, the brother of former Head of the Presidential Administration Andriy Kliuyev, was under economic restrictions (EU asset freezes) due to a motion from Kyiv about "abuse of public funds."

In its judgment, the court noted that restrictive measures could be imposed only on those officials who are identified as being responsible for misappropriation of state funds. The EU court considers that the Council of the European Union, when imposing sanctions, had to verify the validity of charges against a specific person.

In this case, according to judges, there are grounds to doubt the adequacy of evidence passed by the Ukrainian authorities to the European Union. At the same time, the EU Council did not take Kliuyev's arguments into consideration.

In recent years, the European Court of Justice has repeatedly made decisions on lifting sanctions imposed on former officials. However, this decision was the first one when the current sanctions were through into question.

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