PhosAgro Baltic funds frozen in Lithuania due to sanctions

VILNIUS - A Lithuanian bank has frozen millions of funds of PhosAgro Baltic, a fertilizer producer close to the Kremlin, in Lithuania, the Siena investigative journalism center reports.

"The Financial Crime Investigation Service has been informed that a financial institution has suspended PhosAgro Baltic's accounts and frozen funds exceeding 2.9 million euros. The decision was made on March 10," Modesta Zdanauskaite, spokeswoman for the FCIS, told the center.

In addition to the 2.9 million euros in PhosAgro Baltic funds, also 4.4 million euros belonging to eight legal entities and four natural persons in Lithuania have been frozen. .

Siena reports that the ultimate beneficiaries of the PhosAgro group include the Guryev family of Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Litvinenko, an academic from Saint Petersburg who was the supervisor of Russian President Vladimir Putin's PhD thesis. Andrey Guryev junior, the head of PhosAgro, is on the EU sanction list. He resigned after the sanctions were imposed.