FT: Prigozhin's Mother, Sanctions Lifted, Still Has Ties To Son's Companies

Brussels may challenge the European Court's decision.

Violetta Prigozhina, the mother of Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia's Wagner PMC, from whom the European Court lifted sanctions in March 2023, still has ties to her son's business companies. This is revealed in a Financial Times investigation.

Prigozhina owns an art gallery in central St Petersburg that opened in 2018. The FT journalists cite corporate documents and accounts of the establishment indicating links between the gallery and Evgeny Prigozhin's companies.

According to Russian tax documents, the gallery was audited by Accent, a small consultancy that audits almost all of Prigozhin's companies, including those linked to the Wagner Group.

One of the works featured in Prigozhina's art gallery is a landscape entitled "Palmyra in 2022" (the name of an ancient Syrian city in the desert where her son Wagner's troops were based).

Journalists also suspect that the leader of the Wagner Group may have used his mother to circumvent Western sanctions.

According to documents obtained by the editorial board, in 2021 Russian lawyers hired the London-based firm of lawyers Discreet Law to file a complaint in court against journalists naming him as the owner of the Wagner PMC.

The correspondence between Russian and British lawyers used, among other things, his mother's documents to confirm Prigozhin's identity, the journalists wrote.

FT claims that one of Evgeny Prigozhin's key companies is Concord Management and Consulting, whose CEO was Violetta Prigozhina's husband Samuil Zharkoy.

The documents leaked to journalists note that Prigozhina was a co-founder of Concord Management and Consulting between 2008 and 2017. This was the reason for her being put on the sanctions list in March 2022.

Exactly one year later, the Luxembourg court said that Prigozhina allegedly had no economic ties with her son. Her lawyer noted in court that "she has not been linked in any way" to Evgeny Prigozhin's companies for more than five years.

A European official told the FT that Brussels could challenge the European court's decision to lift sanctions against Prigozhina within two months.