DOJ Issues Directive Ending Biden-Era Task Force Aimed at Seizing Assets of Russian Oligarchs

The program was started in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) disbanded a program started under the Biden administration that sought to seize Russian oligarchs’ assets after the war in Ukraine started.

In a memo released this week to DOJ employees on Wednesday, new Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office said that the effort, called the Task Force KleptoCapture, will end in order to shift DOJ focus on targeting criminal gangs and drug cartels.

That memo said that “attorneys assigned to those initiatives shall return to their prior posts, and resources currently devoted to those efforts shall be committed to the total elimination of Cartels and TCOs,” referring to transnational criminal organizations.

“This policy requires a fundamental change in mindset and approach,” Bondi also said in the directive, adding that resources now devoted to enforcing sanctions and seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs will now directed at Mexican cartels.

Weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland launched the KleptoCapture program to put pressure on Russia’s finances in order to stop the war. Nearly three years from the start of the conflict, fighting still rages in eastern Ukraine, although the Trump administration has said that President Donald Trump would seek to end the conflict.

At the time, Garland said that the law enforcement group would focus on enforcing sanctions and placing other penalties on high-level Russian officials and business people in order to prevent Russia from accessing global markets.

“Arrests and prosecution will be sought when supported by the facts and the law,” the DOJ said in its announcement at the time. “Even if defendants cannot be immediately detained, asset seizures and civil forfeitures of unlawful proceeds—including personal real estate, financial and commercial assets—will be used to deny resources that enable Russian aggression.”

This week, Trump said there has been progress made on ending the Russia–Ukraine war, after he said during his 2024 campaign that he would stop the conflict within 24 hours of taking office.

“We made a lot of progress on Russia, Ukraine,” Trump said earlier this week while speaking to reporters at the Oval Office. “We’ll see what happens. We’re going to stop that ridiculous war.”

Meanwhile, Trump last month signed an executive order—one of many targeting illegal immigration and border security—that classifies drug cartels and two criminal gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.

“It is the policy of the United States to ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the United States and their ability to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States through their extraterritorial command-and-control structures, thereby protecting the American people and the territorial integrity of the United States,” the order stated.

And late last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News that after Trump’s executive order, “all options will be on the table” for U.S. military intervention against Mexican cartels.

“So the president will make that call. I’ll work with him in that decision-making process. Ultimately, we will hold nothing back to secure the American people,” he said.

Trump often said during his presidential campaign that he would use the U.S. military against the cartels and has suggested that special forces could be sent into Mexico.

The Epoch Times contacted the DOJ for additional comment on Friday.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.