The Court of Appeal overturned the district court’s verdict. The bailiff was allowed to freeze and confiscate the payment of 323,000 euros. According to the Court of Appeal, the money was going to the company controlled by Arkadi Rotenberg.

Helsinki the court of appeals has overturned the Russian oligarch to Arkady Rotenberg related district court decision. It is about a case where a Finnish company had bought fertilizers from the Dubai-based Agricultural Minerals DMCC company.

Osuuspankki stopped the payment of 323,000 euros for fertilizers in October 2021, and the enforcement agency confiscated the funds.

The reason was that, according to the authority, Rotenberg had direct or indirect access to the funds.

In the district court the foreclosure decision was overturned, but the court of appeals, which issued its decision on Wednesday, assessed the matter differently.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which appealed against the decision, presented a lot of evidence to the court, including articles from investigative journalism and the annual report of the Estonian Economic Intelligence Unit.

The Court of Appeal found that the Dubai company actually acted on behalf of the Russian company AO Minudobreniya, which is controlled by Rotenberg.

Court of Appeal according to that, the Dubai-based Agricultural Minerals company could be required to provide its own report that the money was not going to be made available or used by the embargoed person. Such an explanation had not been presented, the Court of Appeal stated.

When the court asked about it separately, Agricultural Minerals had only stated that it had not been in a commercial or other contractual relationship with Minudobrenia. The Court of Appeal did not find the answer reliable, because the enforcement agency had presented ample evidence of the connections to the Court of Appeal.

Court of Appeal gave weight to published newspaper articles and other reports, which the district court had valued less than the court of appeals.

“For example, the mere fact that it is an online publication or an article does not mean that the evidence cannot have probative value. The more the same content is repeated in different publications based on different source information, the more said publications or articles can be considered to strengthen each other’s evidentiary power,” the Court of Appeal writes.

Finnish Arkadi Rotenberg, who also became known as the owner of the hockey team Jokereiten and the hockey hall Hartwall Areena, is Boris Rotenbergin brother. The brothers, who got rich with their business, have belonged to the Russian president Vladimir Putin close circle.

Arkadi Rotenberg was initially added to the European Union’s sanctions list already in 2014.