The paper focuses on analyzing the legal foundations behind Western jurisdictions' imposition of sanctions against Russian business representatives and their relatives, alongside current law enforcement practices. A significant overarching trend in sanctions legislation development involves progressively broadening the range of grounds for imposing sanctions while concurrently simplifying inclusion in sanctions lists. Prominent examples include the enlargement of the sectors within the economy affected by US sanctions, as well as the ability of the US and UK to impose blocking sanctions based solely on a person's involvement in a specific economic sector. In the EU, imposing sanctions on a businessperson operating in a particular sector still necessitates proving a leading position, albeit this remains a somewhat vague term. This approach also stems from a simplification: the presumption of a connection between major businesses and the political regime, as explored in this paper, obviates the need to establish a connection with said regime. The UK has similarly streamlined the procedure for imposing sanctions by extending them to family members of sanctioned individuals, thus obviating the necessity of demonstrating financial and economic ties with the sanctioned person. A more significant relaxation in sanctions imposition arises from the simplified procedure introduced for sanctioning individuals already under the sanctions of the UK's allies. This procedure merely involves verifying the alignment of the grounds for imposing sanctions, without scrutinizing the actual circumstances leading to the person's inclusion on the sanctions list. In essence, the only way to evade inclusion in the sanctions lists is to refrain from engaging in any activities that might serve as a basis for such inclusion. Frequently, such a scenario proves unattainable, implying that Russian big business representatives will need to implement measures to mitigate potential damages, given that entirely eliminating the risk of sanctions becomes nearly implausible.