Financial warfare is the new global warzone

A branch of the US Treasury uses sophisticated financial tools to hit targets linked to hostile governments. This is the new global warzone, write Leah McGrath Goodman and Lynnley Browning.

IT WAS midday on March 20 when an executive at Gunvor Group, the world’s fourth-largest oil trading firm, sitting at his office computer in Geneva, glanced up at the screen and got a jolt: A tweet had popped up saying one of the company’s founders, Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire Russian businessman, had been placed on a US government blacklist, along with 31 other people and businesses said to be linked to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The previous day, Timchenko had finalised the sale of his 43.59% stake in Gunvor to business partner Torbjörn Törnqvist, a Swedish oil trader, the firm’s other co-founder and now its chief executive.