Sanctions

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Alex Sobel

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

That is absolutely correct. Every sovereign nation that believes in fair play and the rule of law around the world should be doing all it can to stop Putin being successful in Ukraine. That includes India, China and every other country around the world.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

As somebody who had a grandparent born and raised in Ukraine, this war does come emotionally quite close to me, as it does to everybody of Ukrainian descent in this country. From the 1990s onwards, British-headquartered legal, finance, audit and risk companies have helped to create the kleptocracy that exists in Russia. Many of them still have huge offices in Moscow, such as KPMG, PwC and Linklaters, and Ernst and Young actually put Rosneft on the London stock exchange. What action is the Foreign Secretary taking to ensure British companies withdraw from Russia and withdraw their support from the kleptocracy that exists and is funding the war machine, and to delist some Russian companies on the stock exchange?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We are running through a list, and we have already sanctioned over 120 businesses in Russia and oligarchs. We have prevented the Russian central bank from deploying its international reserves to counteract sanctions. We are freezing bank assets of vast parts of the Russian economy, and we will continue to do more to target individual companies with freezes and sanctions. As I have said, nothing is off the table, and we are working in train with our allies on all of this.