Sanctions
As a result of the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, U.S. president Barack Obama signed an executive order instructing his government to impose sanctions on the Rotenberg brothers; they were placed on the Specially Designated Nationals List.
As a result of the sanctions, Visa and MasterCard stopped servicing SMP Bank. In September 2014, Italy seized €30 million of Rotenberg's real estate, including four villas in Sardinia and Tarquinia, and a hotel in Rome. The U.S added Arkady and Igor Rotenberg on their blacklist of Russian oligarchs, freezing assets for US$65 million in 2014. In November 2016, the General Court of the European Union confirmed the sanctions against Russia and the freezing of Arkady's funds which had taken effect on 30 July 2014, but limited to the new properties added by the EU Council in March 2015.
In September 2014, Novaya Gazeta published a journalistic inquiry of Anna Politkovskaja and Alexei Navalny, revealing that Igor Rotenberg, son of Arkady, secretly controlled an estate in Monte Argentario through a society registered in Vaduz. The Russian State Duma then proposed a bill, known as the Rotenberg Law, allowing sanctioned Russians to get compensated by the state, but it was declined.
Rotenberg is one of many Russian "oligarchs" named in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, CAATSA, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2017.
In July 2020, a report by the United States Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs determined that companies linked to Rotenberg had evaded sanctions by purchasing more than $18 million in art in between May and November 2014. The purchases were made months after he was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department.
On 3 March 2022, the United States imposed visa restrictions and froze assets of Rotenberg, his sons, and his daughter, following the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rotenberg was also sanctioned by the United Kingdom and by New Zealand.
Press research, published in June 2023, showed that Rotenberg had financed the purchase of a mansion in Kitzbühel, Austria back in 2013. Rotenberg's firm Olpon Investments, located in Cyprus, sent some €11.5 million to the Meridian Trade Bank in Latvia from where it was lent to the Cyprus-based Wayblue Investments Limited. Wayblue concluded the purchase in Austria and was still listed as owner of the property in 2023. In 2017 the loan itself was transferred from the Latvian bank to Cresco Securities in Estonia. A Cresco representative claimed in 2023, that the loan was never paid back to them.
Since Austrian authorities were not able to identify the owners of Wayblue Investments Limited, no legal action was taken. According to local witnesses, Vladimir Putin's daughter Maria Vorontsova stayed in the house on a regular basis.
