Sanctions around the group

analysisScreening of consolidated sanctions and politically-exposed-person datasets during the research returned the company's former name, FG BCS LTD, only as a Russian register record of a foreign organisation with Cyprus registration HE 347295 and no sanctions topics, and returned Oleg Mikhasenko's name only as a Russian register record with no sanctions or PEP topics. Screening covers only the datasets searched; it does not prove that no other listing exists, and the match for Mikhasenko is by name. ^{1 2}

analysisOn 21 November 2024 the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated BCS Bank AO, a Moscow-based bank, as one of more than 50 small and medium-sized Russian banks in an action that also targeted Gazprombank, Russian securities registrars and finance officials. OFAC said the designations were meant to prevent Russia from using the international financial system to pay for the technology and equipment it needed to sustain its war against Ukraine, and warned foreign financial institutions with correspondent relationships with these banks of significant sanctions risk. BCS Bank was no longer part of the company's group at the time, and OFAC's announcement does not mention the company or its affiliates. A consolidated sanctions dataset also lists BCS Bank under Russia- and Ukraine-related programmes of the EU, Switzerland and Australia, and a Russian state news agency reported that the bank had been on the EU sanctions list since July 2026. The Bank of Russia's register showed the bank, at the time of the research, as holding universal banking licence No. 101 (from 29 November 2018), brokerage and dealer licences (from 14 October 2010) and a depository licence (from 27 June 2014), with no end dates. ^{1 2 3 4}

analysisA Russian state news agency reported on 18 September 2026 that Belgium's Council of State, the country's supreme administrative court, had held unlawful the Belgian treasury's 2024 refusal to release BCS Bank's funds and securities frozen at Euroclear and had annulled it as issued by an authority without the power to decide. The treasury had refused on the grounds that the bank had not shown it had fully ended its relationship with Russia's sanctioned National Settlement Depository and that the bank planned to move the funds out of the EU. The bank challenged the refusal and, according to the report, the court sided with it; the court did not find the freezing itself unlawful, and the Belgian authorities were to reconsider the bank's application, with no assured outcome. The report does not identify the ruling. ⁴

analysisBy a decision of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council of 6 July 2025, enacted by Presidential Decree No. 465/2025 of the same day, Ukraine imposed personal sanctions for ten years, including the blocking of assets, on Vitalii Oleksandrovych Shelikhovskyi (in Russian, Vitaly Aleksandrovich Shelikhovsky), a Russian citizen. The annex to the decision gives no position or affiliation for him. The Russian taxpayer number it gives is the one that Russian registry data record for Vitaly Shelikhovsky as director and owner of BCS Holding and general director of BCS Company and BCS FT. The identification rests on the matching name and taxpayer number, and the decision does not mention BCS or the company. ^{1 2 3 4}

analysisA consolidated sanctions dataset lists BrokerCreditService Company LLC (BCS Company), the Novosibirsk broker, as a sanctions target under a Ukrainian sanctions programme, and marks BCS Holding and its subsidiary BCS FT as linked to, or controlled by, a sanctioned person without listing either of them under a sanctions programme of its own. The underlying Ukrainian decision on BCS Company is not in the retained record, and the marks on BCS Holding and BCS FT are derived by the dataset from their ownership and management by Shelikhovsky. ^{5 6}

analysisOn 2 November 2023 OFAC added PJSC SPB Exchange (Saint Petersburg Exchange) to its list of Specially Designated Nationals under Executive Order 14024, identifying it as a financial institution; a consolidated sanctions dataset also records UK and Canadian sanctions on the exchange. Registered on 21 January 2009, it organises trading on financial markets from its registered address in Moscow, and no termination of its activity is recorded. A Russian technology-industry profile of Oleg Mikhasenko lists him as a member of the exchange's board of directors from 17 May 2019. The record does not show whether he still sat on the board when the exchange was designated, and the designation concerns the exchange, not him. ^{1 2 3 4}