Russian billionaire businessman Oleg Deripaska turned over three luxury planes he had been leasing in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to impose sanctions on him and other Russians, according to a report published Thursday afternoon.
Deripaska’s Gulfstream executive jets were being used by senior management, including him, for business trips related to his Rusal aluminum firm.
“He’s sanctioned, his companies are sanctioned, he has to return the aircraft. He has to early-terminate the leases, under sanctions rules,” Alireza Ittihadieh, director of Freestream, the company that had listed the jets for lease, told Reuters.
The Reuters story didn’t name the home country of the company leasing the planes to Deripaska, but presumably the company fears being hit by U.S. sanctions related to doing business with Russia.
The turning over of the planes, which each sell for $50 million when new, comes five weeks after U.S. officials issued sanctions against key players in Russia who had made money from “malign activities” associated with the Kremlin.
In addition to having turned over the planes, Deripaska and his employees were banned from traveling to the U.S. and making business deals with anyone in America or U.S. citizens.
