Herzog said to ask Macron to help remove sanctions on Putin-linked oligarch Kantor
Russia-born Moshe Kantor resigned last year as president of the European Jewish Congress after facing sanctions for his ties to the regime
President Isaac Herzog has asked French President Emmanuel Macron for help lifting European sanctions against a prominent Jewish oligarch linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Haaretz daily reported Thursday.
Russia-born Moshe Kantor resigned last year as the president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) after the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on him because of his alleged involvement with Putin’s regime, which is leading an ongoing war on Ukraine.
Kantor, a dual citizen of Russia and Britain who has been living in London for over a decade, was accused by the UK of being active in industries “which Putin uses to prop up his war economy.”
The sanctions included the freezing of his assets in the United Kingdom.
Kantor is a large shareholder of the publicly traded firm Acron, one of Russia’s largest fertilizer producers.
He has since also faced EU sanctions.
Herzog made the request in a phone call at the behest of European Jewish leaders, Haaretz said, citing sources in the president’s office. The EJC has been involved in efforts to remove the sanctions against Kantor, according to Haaretz.
Kantor has been a major donor to Jewish causes.
He also had a prominent role and was a key speaker at the 2020 World Holocaust Forum held at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which brought world leaders together — Putin and Macron among them — to mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
The event later came under criticism for allegedly promoting pro-Russian revisionist propaganda, after a video aired at the event omitted how the Soviet Union and Germany carved up and occupied Poland together as part of a pact that lasted from 1939 to 1941. That pact collapsed when Germany invaded Russia, and the Russian government has long sought to downplay its significance while highlighting what Moscow sees as the Russian people’s heroic battle to crush Nazism.
