Authorities on the island of Jersey are investigating Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich over suspected money laundering, indicating a new willingness to tackle suspicious sources of wealth.
“It represents a shift in political climate and changing attitudes toward fortunes that were made in the early days of post-Soviet Russia,” said OCCRP Senior Investigative Journalist Tom Stocks, who helped report the story.
“This would have been unthinkable a few years ago.”
The details of the ongoing investigation were revealed in a series of Swiss court judgments obtained by OCCRP that gave authorities in Switzerland permission to provide banking information to Jersey.
The judgments say that Jersey prosecutors suspect a businessman referred to as “G” — which reporters confirmed to be Abramovich — made “corruption payments” in the 1990s to maintain control of a Russian company, and later sold that company and paid the proceeds into Swiss bank accounts held by Jersey companies.
The details coincide with Abramovich’s 2005 sale of the Russian oil company Sibneft for $13 billion — a fortune that propelled him into the echelons of the ultra-wealthy. In the years since, he has gone on to invest in Chelsea Football Club and hedge funds, amass an art collection worth nearly $1 billion, and buy up luxury real estate and superyachts.
Abramovich’s lawyers deny any allegations of wrongdoing and told OCCRP that he was “not a party” to the Swiss proceedings so could not comment on them. He has not been charged with any crime in Jersey.
Jersey prosecutors are also examining whether companies linked to Abramovich had violated sanctions law by continuing to do business after he was sanctioned there on March 10, 2022.