School ‘very sad’ to remove former Russian minister’s children due to sanctions

School staff were “very sad” to ask a former Russian government minister to remove his children after it emerged he was subject to sanctions, a court was told.

Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, 48, the former mayor of Sevastopol in illegally annexed Crimea, is facing seven counts of circumventing sanctions between February 2023 and January 2024.

He is said to have deliberately avoided sanctions by opening a Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) account on or before February 2023 and having tens of thousands of pounds transferred to it by his wife, Ekaterina Ovsiannikova, 47.

Ovsiannikova is facing four counts of breaching sanctions by assisting with the payments.

His brother, Alexei Owsjanikow, 47, has denied circumventing sanctions to buy a Mercedes Benz worth £54,500 for Ovsiannikov, as well as spending £41,027 on fees at the Royal Russell School for Ovsiannikov and Ovsiannikova’s children.

The first of the couple’s children to attend the school in Croydon, south London, was enrolled for the 2020-21 academic year.

Ovsiannikov and Ovsiannikova signed an acceptance form and a school term’s worth of fees, amounting to £12,273, was paid ahead of the start date, which was standard practice, Southwark Crown Court heard on Monday.

Two of their other children joined in 2022, it was told.

Neil Cufley, director of operations and finance at the Surrey private school, said whoever signed the acceptance form at the point of enrolment was liable for fee payment.

However, jurors were told that Owsjanikow paid for the fees on multiple occasions

Another man, named Roman Owsjanikow, paid for the fees in August 2021 and Ovsiannikova paid in May 2023, the court heard.

Mr Cufley, who said he was in charge of all operations bar teaching at the school, said “it’s not common” for a party other than the acceptance form signatories to pay the fees.

He said: “We have 1,300 pupils in the whole school. Fewer than 10 percent were paid for by other people.”

He learned Ovsiannikov was a designated person under European Union and and UK law in an email from Barclays sent in November 2022, the court heard.

Barclays warned that consequently some transferred funds had been frozen, Mr Cufley said.

The director told jurors that the bank asked multiple questions including whether it had permission to release the money.

Mr Cufley said he responded that it was fine to do so as other people were paying the fees, not Ovsiannikov.

“We looked at the situation and said, well, if Mr Ovsiannikov isn’t paying then that’s fine, because we aren’t taking any payment from him”, he said.

“This is a very difficult situation for a independent school”, he added, and said it had carried out its own checks on the parents.

In April 2023, the Royal Russell School was contacted by the National Crime Agency (NCA) about Ovsiannikov.

Mr Cufley held the first in-person conversation with the parents on the subject a year later.

He said: “It was a very sad experience for us because we had to get the parents and say you’ll have to leave the school.

“We had to meet with mum and dad and say look the children will have to go elsewhere.”

Staff had enjoyed having them at the school, he added.

All three defendants, who deny the charges, are Russian nationals and hold Russian passports.

Ovsiannikov and Owsjanikow also hold British passports by virtue of their Bradford-born father.

Ovsiannikov was elected as governor of Sevastopol in an election organised by Russia in September 2017.

The EU made Ovsiannikov a designated person under its sanctions legislation on November 21 2017 – meaning he was also a designated person in the UK as the country was still in the EU.

Ovsiannikov resigned as the governor of Sevastopol on July 11 2019 and returned to work as the Russian deputy minister for industry and trade.

On August 4 2022, Ovsiannikov made an online application from Turkey for a UK passport, having travelled from Russia to Turkey three days earlier, the court previously heard.

The Court of Justice of the European Union ordered On October 26 2022 that Ovsiannikov’s designation should be annulled, but that did not happen for some months.

Ovsiannikov remained subject to sanctions in the UK by virtue of being a designated person under the Russia Regulations.

On January 27 2023, Ovsiannikov was issued with a British passport and he arrived in the UK on February 1 2023 – five days before his name was formally removed from the EU sanctions list.

On February 24 2023, HBOS froze Ovsiannikov’s account after they discovered that he was on the UK Sanctions List.