Further sanctions targeting 36 Russians - oligarchs and their family members - are coming into force at midnight tonight, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta has announced.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
In a statement, Mahuta said this second round of autonomous sanctions over the Ukraine conflict targeted some of Russia's richest businesspeople and their family members.
"This list includes some of Russia's richest businesspeople, as well as chairs and chief executives of some of Russia's biggest companies. They will not be able to travel to Aotearoa New Zealand, move assets here, or use our financial systems to hide from sanctions imposed by other countries," she said.
"Officials continue to work as quickly as possible to identify individuals and entities, while ensuring legal thresholds are met and due diligence is given. More measures will be enacted in the coming weeks."
The list still does not include steel magnate Alexander Abramov, who owns the luxury Helena Bay Lodge in Northland.
However, it does include Chelsea football club owner Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich, who also owns the Millhouse private investment company.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern this afternoon said reports of Ukraine civilians being killed, raped and severely wounded by Russian troops was "beyond reprehensible" and Russia must answer for atrocities that went against international law.
The government was planning further work measures to punish Russia including deployments, sanctions, and on importation, she said.
"As soon as those have been settled on we'll happily share. The reason that I'm not sharing them at post-Cab today is because for some of them there were some follow-up implications we wanted to work through before announcing.
"Broadly speaking there's more things that we are looking to do in short order around sanctions, there's more that we're looking to do around importation and there's more that we're looking to do around our people supporting some of the efforts.
"You'll see we've already made deployments and we're considering whether there's anything more we can do in that space."