1/8 Russian Oligarch Files: Roman #Abramovich
A morally #corrupt high-profile Russian billionaires because of the success of football club Chelsea FC, Roman Abramovich was sanctioned later than some others, because he is less obviously influential than other #Putin allies.
2/8 His influence in the Kremlin is limited, he is more #Putin ‘s bitch than his friend, but is tolerated by Mr Putin (as long as he pays). Abramovich has made corrupted money out of the relationship, through #putin awarding him contracts for the #FIFA 2018 World Cup in Russia.
3/8 #Abramovich denies having close ties to Mr Putin or the Kremlin, but the UK portion of his estimated $12.4bn fortune is now frozen. At the start of the war he was forced to put Chelsea up for sale for £3bn. and his £150m house in London's Kensington Palace Gardens in London.
4/8 #Abramovich profited off Russians in the 1990’ during Boris Yeltsin's presidency, buying the oil company Sibneft at a corrupt undervaluation. His assets include the third-longest yacht in the world, Eclipse and another mega-yacht, Solaris.
5/6 In 2018 he did not renew his UK visa, and has instead been using his newly acquired #Israeli passport to travel.
#Abramovich is now he is banned from entering the UK, and is stuck in #Russia and #Israel for the rest of his corrupt life.
This is a summary of a detailed report from the BBC - it is available on this link: Russia oligarchs: The mega-rich men facing global sanctions bbc.co.uk/news/uk-605930…
An excerpt from an investigation into the corrupt awarding of #Portugese citizenship:
Usually, as Portugal’s citizenship application portal makes explicit, candidates can expect to wait 24 to 29 months, but Abramovich waited only nine weeks from the February date the Porto board flagged his application for Lurdes Serrano to the time he was granted a “naturalized citizen birth certificate” on April 30. A few weeks later, Lurdes Serrano confirmed to the board that Abramovich’s citizenship had been granted: “I inform you that the respective nationality registration has already been carried out.”
A rare surviving billionaire from Russia’s “gangster capitalism” era who still retained a direct line to Vladimir Putin now possessed EU citizenship. Even his own local lawyer told VF she had been “surprised” at the speed. In response to questions from VF, the Portuguese government agency that oversees that central registry office said “disciplinary procedures” were ongoing.
It was ultimately Alexei Navalny—the Russian opposition leader currently in a Siberian jail—who directed global attention to Abramovich’s citizenship in December 2021, shortly after the Portuguese press first confirmed it. He criticized Portuguese authorities for “carrying suitcases of money” and wrote on his Twitter account that the oligarch had “finally managed to find a country where you can give some bribes and make some semi-official and official payments to end up in the EU.” Santos Silva, the Portuguese foreign minister who back in 2020 had advocated for changes to the law, pushed back against Navalny’s claims in a press conference.
“The idea that Portuguese public sector employees carry suitcases of money is insulting,” Santos Silva said, insisting the allegation was “not true. And as we all know, when criticism has no basis, it also has no pertinence.” (VF has seen no evidence that Porto’s board members or civil servants working in the Conservatória dos Registos Centrais received any payment beyond the standard processing fee.)
A spokesperson clarified to VF that Santos Silva had not meant to imply that Abramovich’s application procedure was legal, however; around the time of Litvak’s arrest in March last year, Santos Silva asserted that action was needed to keep the law from being “manipulated”—pervertida. The Portuguese government, meanwhile, has acknowledged that Abramovich will not lose his nationality as a result of EU sanctions, nor can he be prevented from visiting Portugal (barring an extraordinary outcome from the Litvak investigation).
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