A Formula One driver and a Russian previously linked to a £300m mansion that is London’s second largest house after Buckingham Palace are among 160 individuals added to an EU sanctions list designed to squeeze Vladimir Putin’s “closest circle”. Also on the updated list is Andrey Guryev, a fertiliser Russian billionaire, revealed in 2015 to be the beneficiary of an offshore company that owned Witanhurst, a 25-bedroom property in Highgate,north London. EU restrictive measures imposed in response to the invasion of Ukraine and before that to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 now apply to more than 30 Russian businesspeople. This compares to the UK’s sanctions list, which has named just 10 oligarchs since 2014. As with Russians, the EU has now banned Belarusian citizens from depositing more than €100,000 in European banks. An EU official said all the evidence suggested sanctions were having the desired effect on the Russian economy.

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