washingtonnew york march 8 reuters  the united states and its allies will look for ways to impose sanctions on companies under russian metals and telecoms tycoon alisher usmanovs control without raising the price of commodities a us treasury department spokesperson told reuters on tuesday the united states last week imposed sanctions on the billionaire as part of several rounds of measures washington has taken including against russian president vladimir putin after russian forces invaded ukraine in the biggest assault on a european state since world war two moscow calls the assault a special operation the action similar to sanctions imposed by the european union on usmanov blocked his assets including his yacht and private jet read more but the treasury department left out companies controlled by him from the sanctions by issuing what is known as a general license the spokesperson said the treasurys sanctions align with those imposed by international partners including the eu to prevent asset flight the us and eu acted quickly to block usmanov’s personal assets treasury’s designation of usmanov puts us in a position to now target companies under his control said the spokesperson on condition of anonymity we are going to work with our allies and partners to design a set of mitigations that allow us to target companies under usmanovs control without driving up the price of commodities like nickel which could inadvertently enrich him the spokesperson said prices of nickel started to rise after major producer russia invaded ukraine and western sanctions threatened supply trade in london of the industrial metal was suspended on tuesday after prices doubled within hours read more russia supplies about 10 of the worlds nickel washington trade lawyer doug jacobson said that under the license issued by treasury in the event that usmanov owns 50 or more of a company it is not blocked unless separately designated ownership of 50 or more of a company by a party under us sanctions is generally the threshold at which the company is also generally blocked but usmanovs property including his aircraft yacht and any bank accounts or property held in the united states are still blocked under thursdays measure jacobson said they are separating him from his business interests as a result of that action he said theyre trying to avoid a rusal situation i would imagine in 2018 the us treasury imposed sanctions on russian billionaire oleg deripaska rusal en and other companies in which he owned stakes citing malign activities by russia prompting turmoil in global aluminum markets the united states later lifted the sanctions on en and aluminum giant rusal we have said repeatedly that we will calibrate our sanctions to cause maximum pain to putin and his cronies while minimizing spillover to the global economy the treasury spokesperson said on tuesday usmanov founder of russian mining company metalloinvest owns 49 of usm holdings the treasury said in a statement last week usms assets include metalloinvest mobile operator megafon and russias largest copper deposit operator udokan copper among others according to its website some of usmanovs investments in us and chinese tech companies have been made through yuri milner’s dst and his own company usm according to media reports he is also an investor in silicon valley vc fund rising tide according to filings with the us securities and exchange commission in a statement to reuters a dst spokesperson said usmanov’s last investment in dst global funds was in 2011 and dst global funds have not raised capital from russian investors since that year he added that all but one of the portfolio companies in the dst fund were exited and the remaining company is illiquid and of limited value usm and rising tide did not immediately respond to requests for comment reporting by daphne psaledakis in washington and echo wang in new york additional reporting by pratima desai in london editing by mary milliken and alistair bell