In early April, the United States announced it would impose a highly aggressive set of sanctions against Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and close ally of Vladimir Putin, and his aluminum company, Rusal. In effect, the sanctions froze Rusal’s American assets, cut American firms off from doing business with Rusal, and sanctioned any foreign firm that chose to do business with it. In enacting the sanctions, the U.S. cited Deripaska’s alleged history of bribery, extortion, and racketeering; his links to organized crime; and his purported order that a business rival be murdered (all allegations he has denied). In other words, they demonstrated that the U.S. government would willingly crack down on Putin’s inner circle, exacting penalties for the Kremlin’s documented attempts to meddle in U.S. elections. The effect of the sanctions, which Deripaska called “groundless, ridiculous, and absurd,” was immediate, driving up global aluminum prices and cutting the legs out from under Rusal’s shares. But it now seems Donald Trump’s administration has had enough of punishing Putin’s allies: on Friday, CNN reported that the U.S. Treasury is looking into lifting the sanctions altogether.

The news is not without precedent; at the end of April, just weeks after the sanctions were enacted, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he would extend the “wind-down” period—a chance for companies to wrap up their business with Rusal—by six months. “Rusal has felt the impact of U.S. sanctions because of its entanglement with Oleg Deripaska, but the U.S. government is not targeting the hardworking people who depend on Rusal and its subsidiaries,” he said at the time. “Given the impact on our partners and allies, we are issuing a general license extending the maintenance and wind-down period while we consider Rusal’s petition [to lift the sanctions].”

As CNN notes, Rusal has made some attempts to restrict Deripaska’s influence at the company, reducing his ownership stake and overseeing the resignation of seven of its board members. However, renewed talk of letting Rusal off the hook comes a little less than two weeks after Trump’s disastrous summit in Helsinki, where his ostensible pandering to Putin alarmed even his Republican allies. It also follows an invitation from Putin to host Trump in Moscow—an ask the White House has said the president is “open” to.

Deripaska himself has collected a group of powerful friends, not least among them former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who signed a $10 million contract with the oligarch in 2006 and is believed to have worked with Deripaska to bolster the Kremlin’s reputation and discredit Putin’s enemies. Manafort acknowledged that he had worked for Deripaska, “representing him on business and personal matters,” but claimed that, “My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russian political interests.”