Sanctioned Russian billionaire Boris Rotenberg was allowed to pull funds from a Finnish company in April 2022 by Suupohjan Osuuspankki, a bank in southwest Finland, Kommersant daily reported citing the Finnish publication Ilta-Sanomat.

Reportedly, Rotenberg received the money in cash on April 4, 2022, while on April 8 the EU imposed sanctions against him, including a ban on financial transactions in the Union.

According to Ilta-Sanomat, the bank's compliance officer who monitored the sanctions, it was recommended that the bank refuse to disburse the funds to Boris Rotenberg. However, he was still allowed to withdraw the funds after promising that he would not transfer them to Russia or Belarus. 

According to documents published by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority, the bank decided to cancel the recommendation of a compliance officer. The reasons for the decision were not specified.

According to Ilta-Sanomat, due to US sanctions against Boris Rotenberg, which were imposed in 2014, Suupohjan Osuuspankki has been trying to close his account since 2020. The decision to close the account has been postponed several times.

Kommersant reminds that Boris Rotenberg moved to Finland under the repatriation programme, in which his wife participated, in the 1990s. He obtained a Finnish passport in 2002. Rotenberg is currently under sanctions from the EU, the UK, the US, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Ukraine.

A major investigation in Latvia, dubbed the 'Rotenberg Files', recently also probed the dealings of Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, two of the most prominent Russian oligarchs to be sanctioned after the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.