(19 Feb 2020) A Moscow-based analyst on Wednesday said that US sanctions on a Russian state-controlled brokerage will not have a serious negative impact.
The Trump administration announced sanctions on Tuesday on Swiss-based brokerage Rosneft Trading that has helped the Venezuelan government skirt an American oil embargo.
Venezuela managed to ship hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil last year with the help of Rosneft Trading despite sanctions on its petroleum sector imposed by the Trump administration last year.
The action is an unusually strong move against a company linked to the Russian state and amounts to a substantial escalation of a U.S.-led campaign that has failed to oust Maduro from power.
Tom Adshead, Director of Research at Macro-Advisory Ltd in Moscow, said Rosneft Trading had not been afraid of dealing with Venezuelan oil companies as "there was not much else that threatens them" after its parent company was put on the sanctions list.
Ashead said the U.S had been making signals it would carry out sactions on Rosneft Trading "quite some time ago" and he believed Rosneft should have had time to "shift contracts away from Rosneft Trading".
A spokesman for Russian President, Dmitry Peskov denounced sanctions as "unlawful" and said they will not harm relations between Russia and Venezuela.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control said sanctions can be lifted from Rosneft Trading if they show "concrete, meaningful, and verifiable actions to support democratic order in Venezuela".
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