Maria Zakharova's namesake in Italy reported salary delays due to sanctions.

Maria Viktorovna Zakharova has lived in Italy since 2008 and faces audits when opening accounts and making transfers. She has no plans to change her name.

Italian resident Maria Zakharova , namesake of the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which is under EU sanctions, told Radio RBC that she is experiencing delays in receiving her salary, as well as additional checks when making money transfers or opening bank accounts.

The woman explained that she had been living in Italy since 2008 and had Italian citizenship, but was facing difficulties. Her full name is Maria Viktorovna Zakharova (the Foreign Ministry spokesperson uses the patronymic "Vladimirova"; the EU imposed sanctions against her in 2022), but no one in Italy has a patronymic, so on paper she is simply Maria Zakharova.

"They closed accounts, they closed cards, they checked. At my work, they sent me my salary. My colleagues got it the same day, but mine was two or three days later because of all these checks," she said.

As another example, the woman cited a recent incident when she went to the bank to open an account. "And right at the end of the process, the young man who made the request had a red light on his computer indicating that he needed to verify the person, and they couldn't open an account for me," the woman said.

According to her, her mother, Kristina Zakharova, experienced the same problem . She had to wait two weeks for confirmation that the card could be opened.

Although Zakharova said she was fed up with such situations, she had no plans to change her name and hadn't considered it. "Because of this specifically—no, I've never even considered it," she concluded.

In 2023, The News York Times reported on EU residents who faced difficulties because their names matched those on the EU's sanctions list. Among them were a chef from Vilnius and a Russian language teacher from Kaunas. They both share the same name as the head of the LPR government, Sergei Kozlov, who was sanctioned. Because of their similar names, the men's wages were withheld and their accounts frozen.

In 2014, the US Postal Service refused to deliver sneakers to St. Petersburg resident Sergei Ivanov because his namesake (then the head of the Russian presidential administration, now the president's special representative for environmental issues) was subject to US sanctions . Ivanov was offered the option to re-register the order to someone else, but he chose to have it delivered to his mother.

The then-Chief of the Presidential Administration learned of the situation. "Your package was delayed, and the US Postal Service demonstrated that it can put ignorance and official zeal above basic logic. We may yet encounter such a farce, as there are tens of thousands of Sergey Ivanovs in this country," he pointed out.

Ivanov also joked that the situation was a good example of how to circumvent "the most terrible American sanctions."

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