Tonight, I say to the Russian oligarchs and the cropleters who built billions of dollars off this violent regime, no more.

In President Biden's first state of the Union address, he came down hard on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And he also made clear his administration's dim view of the Russian oligarchs and what he described as their dirty money.

We're joining with European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets.

We're coming for you, ill-begotten gains.

Since the invasion, there's been a lot of talk about these Russian elites, their enormous wealth, and how that wealth connects to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But after all this, maybe you're still wondering just who are these oligarchs and why they refer to that way, and how did they get all that money?

So, Russian oligarchs, they are for the most part, people who over the past two decades have amassed billions of dollars, mostly by virtue of a close friendship or other personal or business acquaintance to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Spencer Woodson is with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

They often own large parts or entire parts of what had been state-owned enterprises. Sometimes they make hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, selling those same former state-owned enterprises back to the Russian state.

And they serve the interests of Vladimir Putin and follow his orders, and in some cases pay money into networks that are believed to be essentially Vladimir Putin's own secret wallet.

This isn't the first time that the US and the international community have gone after the oligarchs, impounding and freezing assets to make their lives uncomfortable to loosen Putin's grip, and shut off covert sources of funds to him in his regime.

Sanctions were also imposed when Russia occupied Crimea.

Consider this, Russia's war against Ukraine has created an urgency around dismantling the oligarchy.

But hunting down assets will mean taking a hard look at some of the US financial systems that help hide corrupt wealth.

That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Michelle Martin. It's Saturday, April 2.

Dozens of oligarchs, their families and associates have been added to US sanctions lists, and in the past few weeks there have been high-profile international seizures of assets from a handful of Russian billionaires.

We woke up this morning to news that the United Kingdom has frozen the assets of seven Russian oligarchs, one of whom is Roman Abramovich.

The man who since 2003 has been the single owner of Chelsea Football Club. He's now been sanctioned by the British government.

All of his assets have been frozen. He's also been hit with the travel ban.

We wanted to know more about the effect that these sanctions could have and how they will be enforced.

So we called Paul Masaro. He's a congressional foreign policy advisor who specializes in sanctions, illicit finance and counter corruption.

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