The billionaire Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), was sanctioned because he is the largest shareholder in the fertilizer company Acron, which is of „vital strategic importance to the Russian government.”
Moshe Kantor, a well-known Russian oligarch and head of the European Jewish Congress, was also hit by sanctions in the UK on Wednesday. Forbes estimates Kantor’s net worth at $11 billion.
Kantor, who is also vice-chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council in London, is a Russian, Israeli and British citizen, according to The Jerusalem Post.
The new sanctions were announced by British Foreign Secretary Lizz Truss.
„Our latest wave of measures will end UK imports of Russian energy and sanction more individuals and companies, decimating Putin’s war machine”
– said Truss.
„Together with our allies, we will show the Russian elite that they cannot wash their hands of atrocities committed at Putin’s behest. We will not rest until Ukraine is victorious.”
The British government said that Kantor would be hit by sanctions because he is the largest shareholder in the fertilizer company Acron, which is „of vital strategic importance to the Russian government.”
According to Truss, Russian President Vladimir Putin is using Kantor’s company and others to „support his war economy.”
Kantor is the president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), the affiliate of the Ronald Lauder-led World Jewish Congress (WJC).
András Heisler, President of Mazsihisz, also holds the position of Vice President of this organization.
As it will be recalled, in 2018, when EMIH was awarded the right to implement and operate the the House of Fates Holocaust museum, which had been years in the making,
Kantor sharply criticized the head of EMIH, Rabbi Shlomo Köves, accusing his organization of having „no Hungarian traditions and roots.”
In response, the EMIH leader called Kantor „an oligarch with all the trappings” who „has no idea about Hungarian history,” the Times Of Israel reported in September 2018.
Kantor’s criticism of the handover of the House of Fates to EMIH was no doubt at the instigation of Mazsihisz.
Kantor said at the time that Hungary’s right-wing government was encouraging antisemitism and trivializing the crimes of the Holocaust, and that there was no guarantee that the museum would be run independently.
„The memory of the Holocaust is not a plaything to reward political cronies” and the government’s aim „to whitewash the Holocaust is not worthy of an EU member state,” Kantor said.
EMIH’s chief rabbi then called Kantor a „post-Soviet oligarch” on the so-called Putin List, published by the US Treasury Department in January 2018, which included a list of names of those who could face sanctions for alleged Russian government interference in the 2016 US election.
