Britain is to target wealth linked to the Kremlin in response to the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday.
“Where people have obtained wealth by corruption and where we can see a link with the Kremlin... it may be possible to have unexplained wealth orders and other sanctions on those individuals,” Mr. Johnson told BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. He also said the government was considering something similar to the U.S. Magnitsky Act.
Technical experts from Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will visit Britain on Monday to collect samples of the nerve agent used in the attack.
Also on Saturday, Russia’s Ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, said Moscow “had nothing to do” with the attack.
He also appeared to suggest that Britain itself may have been the source of the chemical agent. “When you have a nerve agent, you check it against certain samples you have in your laboratories,” he said.
“And Porton Down, as we now all know, is the largest military facility in the U.K. that has been dealing with chemical weapons research — and it’s actually only eight miles from Salisbury.”