By Stewart Bishop
US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday told Congress that the US Department of Justice supports expected proposed laws easing the forfeiture process for money from Russian oligarchs and allowing part of the funds to be directly diverted to Ukraine.
In a US Senate Committee on Appropriations hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Garland if the DOJ needs any legislative fixes to better go after Russian oligarchs and kleptocracy. The attorney general responded that he expects there will be requests from the White House for legal changes in the coming days.
“Particularly in a way in which we do the forfeitures to make it easier to do the forfeitures,” Garland said. “Also the possibility of taking money out of the fund we collect this way and sending it to Ukraine.”
“I think there will be a receptive audience to give you more money if that’s what it needs to go after the people who’ve profited from destroying the Russian economy,” Graham replied.
Last month, the DOJ announced the formation of Task Force KleptoCapture, which it said is an interagency law enforcement task force designed to enforce sanctions, export restrictions and other economic penalties in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That outfit of more than a dozen attorneys aims to enforce sanctions coordinated by world powers to punish the Kremlin, complementing the work of a transatlantic task force unveiled by President Joe Biden and European leaders in February.
The task force is run out of Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco’s office and includes prosecutors, agents and analysts from across the DOJ with expertise in areas such as sanctions and export control enforcement, anti-corruption and anti-money laundering, and national security investigations, the DOJ says.
Garland called recent photographs of dead civilians, some with their hands bound behind their backs, “horrific,” and the kind of occurrences that anyone raised in the 20th century would never have expected to see in the 21st century.
“So every part of this government is doing its part, the Justice Department’s role right now is to investigate and prosecute sanctions violations,” Garland said.
He called the cooperation of partner countries with efforts to punish the Russian oligarchs “superb and heartwarming.”
“For law enforcement officers who will often have to twist arms and beg for extraditions and other sorts of cooperation abroad, there is no resistance at all now,” Garland said.
The department says KleptoCapture is “fully empowered to use the most cutting-edge investigative techniques,” including data analytics, cryptocurrency tracing, and intelligence from financial regulators, the private sector and foreign sources.
If suspects can’t be immediately arrested, the Justice Department will seek seizure of their assets, including personal real estate and financial and commercial assets.
–Additional reporting by Jack Queen. Editing by Nicole Bleier.
