Roman Abramovich’s £1bn superyachts and £49m private jet flee sanctions

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Roman Abramovich is on the run from sanctions today and may have fled to Moscow as his £1billion of yachts head for safe Turkish waters after the EU decided to punish the Chelsea owner over Ukraine and he faces a dwindling number of havens for his £12billion of cash and assets.

The billionaire oligarch looked grey, tired and thin as he appeared to flee Tel Aviv in his private jet yesterday lunchtime – just hours after Israel said it will not be a safe place for sanctioned oligarchs.

The Chelsea football club owner was pictured in the VIP lounge of Ben Gurion Airport staring intently at his phone with a face mask pulled over his chin shortly before the aircraft took off for Turkey. Last night the same plane took off for Russia, landing in Moscow at around 3am UK time this morning.

The flights put the £49million Gulfstream beyond the reach of Israel and the European Union, which yesterday agreed to sanction Abramovich. Last night a BBC Panorama documentary accused him of being ‘Putin’s money man’ and said it had uncovered new evidence about alleged corrupt deals that made his gigantic fortune. One expert claimed he had ‘stolen billions’ from the Russian taxpayer. His lawyers insist there is no basis for alleging he amassed wealth through criminality.

And now the EU is sanctioning him because they claim his cash is oiling the machines of Russia’s war. Politico, who says they have seen a draft of the document, claims it says Abramovich enjoys ‘privileged access’ to Vladimir Putin and these ‘very good relations’ line his own pockets in industries that offered ‘a substantial source of revenue’ to the Kremlin, helping Moscow fund its invasion of Ukraine. 

The UK sanctioned him last week because the UK government suspected that Evraz, the steel giant he controls, is alleged to have supplied steel to produce Putin’s army of tanks.

Today his £445million superyacht Solaris is travelling in a straight line apparently to remain in international waters after fleeing Montenegro waters for Turkey yesterday, after the Balkan nation promised to mirror EU sanctions. Staff at the exclusive Porto Montenegro Marina, in the coastal town Tivat, told MailOnline they had been told to seize the boat if it docked. 

Solaris is currently motoring out of the Adriatic and into the Mediterranean between Italy and Albania, and will avoid the coast of Greece. It is expected to arrive in Turkey by the end of the week.

His other boat, the 533ft Eclipse, worth £537million, is also sailing east after leaving the Caribbean island of St Martin last week. The island is part of the EU and would have been able to be seized in port. It is currently heading east above the coast of Libya, and may also be heading for Turkey.

Mr Abramovich flew his luxury Boeing 767, nicknamed ‘The Bandit’, out of London Stansted before a UK ban on the Russian private plane came into force. He has another jet, now believed to be in Dubai.

It came as his beloved Chelsea FC is in turmoil and could be forced into administration before the end of the season unless a buyer is found. The Government may take charge of sale and agree it without asking Abramovich and ensuring he doesn’t see a penny of the proceeds.

BBC Panorama, in a documentary aired last night, said it had been passed a document showing the Russian authorities wanted to charge Mr Abramovich with fraud in the 1990s. The leaked file, held by Russian law enforcement, claimed the government was cheated out of £2billion in a major oil deal.

As Roman Abramovich flees sanctions, it also emerged today:

Russian forces may only be able to sustain full fighting capacity for another ‘ten to 14’ days, senior UK defence sources indicated last night, after which Putin’s men will struggle to hold the ground they have already captured from Ukrainian troops;Hundreds of Russian oligarchs, organisations and individuals are set to be hit with sanctions from the Government after a fast-tracked bill to target ‘dirty money’ in the UK is passed. The sanctions will see the assets of those targeted frozen as the Government also prepares to impose tariffs on a number of Russian goods including vodka and caviar;Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has praised the Russian TV editor who ran onto a live state TV news with a sign protesting Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine that read: ‘Stop the war… They can’t put us all in prison’. Marina Ovsyannikova has not been seen since being arrested;Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala says he will be traveling to Kyiv today to meet with Zelensky, along with Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki and the Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Janša;The website where Britons can sign up to house Ukranian refugees has crashed an hour after the scheme was launched as more than 88,000 generous Brits have registered to welcome those fleeing Russian bombs. Michael Gove confirmed ‘unlimited numbers’ will be allowed to live here for three years;

A new documentary by the BBC has claimed that Roman Abramovich cheated the Russian Government out of £2billion and was investigated for fraud by his country’s Department of Economic Crimes. 

It comes as the BBC claims an investigation by its Panorama team has uncovered new evidence about corrupt deals behind Abramovich’s fortune.

In a programme aired this evening, Panorama spoke with a former Russian chief prosecutor who told them he was preparing a criminal case for the confiscation of oil company Sibneft after an investigation revealed a fraudulent scheme behind its privatisation.

Mr Abramovich paid around $250m (£190m) for the oil company before selling it back to the Russian government for $13billion in 2005.

His lawyers told the BBC there is no basis for alleging he has amassed very substantial wealth through criminality.

But a document obtained by the BBC says that the Russian government was cheated out of $2.7 billion in the Sibneft deal – a claim supported by a 1997 Russian parliamentary investigation which looked at bringing charges of fraud by an organised crime group against Abramovich.

Today the EU imposed further sanctions on Abramovich, who was last week sanctioned by the UK government for his connections with Vladimir Putin. 

His appearance in Tel Aviv comes as Israel grapples with how to deal with the dozens of Jewish Russian oligarchs while Western nations step up sanctions on businesspeople with ties to Putin.

A worried Israeli government has formed a high-level committee to see how the country can maintain its status as a haven for any Jew without running afoul of the biting sanctions targeting Putin’s inner circle.

‘Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other Western countries,’ Foreign Minister Yair Lapid declared Monday during a stop in Slovakia.

Several dozen Jewish tycoons from Russia are believed to have taken on Israeli citizenship or residency in recent years. 

Many have good working relations with the Kremlin, and at least four – Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and Viktor Vekselberg – have been sanctioned internationally because of their purported connections to Putin.   

This could open the door to the bloc banning or imposing punitive tariffs on Russian goods and putting Russia on a par with North Korea or Iran.

Sanctions were set to include an import ban on Russian steel and iron, an export ban on luxury goods including cars worth more than 50,000 euros ($55,000), and a ban on investments in oil companies and the energy sector, according to diplomatic sources.

They would also add Abramovich and 14 others to the EU list of sanctioned Russian billionaires, diplomats said earlier in the day.

It comes as a programme – BBC Panorama: Roman Abramovich’s Dirty Money – aired this evening and claimed to reveal evidence about the corrupt deals that made Abramovich’s fortune.

The Chelsea owner made billions by buying an oil company from the Russian government following a rigged auction in 1995.

Mr Abramovich paid around $250 million for Sibneft – before selling it back to the Russian government for $13 billion in 2005.

His lawyers say there’s no basis for alleging he has amassed very substantial wealth through criminality.

The Russian billionaire has already admitted in a UK court that he made corrupt payments to help get the Sibneft deal off the ground.

He was being sued in London by his former business associate Boris Berezovsky in 2012.

Mr Abramovich won the case, but he described in court how the original Sibneft auction was rigged in his favour and how he gave Mr Berezovsky $10 million to pay off a Kremlin official.

Panorama has obtained a document that is thought to have been smuggled out of Russia.

The information was given to the programme by a confidential source, who says it was secretly copied from files held on Mr Abramovich by Russian law enforcement agencies.

The BBC said it was unable to verify that but that checks with other sources in Russia backed up many of the details in the five-page document.

The document says that the Russian government was cheated out of $2.7 billion in the Sibneft deal – a claim supported by a 1997 Russian parliamentary investigation. 

The document also says that the Russian authorities wanted to charge Roman Abramovich with fraud.

It reads: ‘The Dept. of Economic Crimes investigators came to the conclusion that if Abramovich could be brought to trial he would have faced accusations of fraud…..by an organised criminal group.’

Panorama tracked down Russia’s former chief prosecutor, who investigated the deal in the nineties.

Yuri Skuratov didn’t know about the secret document, but he independently confirmed many of the details about the Sibneft sale.

Mr Skuratov told the programme: ‘Basically, it was a fraudulent scheme where those who took part in the privatisation formed one criminal group that allowed Abramovich and Berezovsky to trick the government and not pay the money that this company was really worth.’

The document also suggests Roman Abramovich was protected by former Russian President, Boris Yeltsin.

It says law enforcement files on Mr Abramovich were moved to the Kremlin and that an investigation by Yuri Skuratov was stopped by the President.

The document says: ‘Skuratov was preparing a criminal case for the confiscation of Sibneft on the basis of the investigation of its privatisation. The investigation was stopped by President Yeltsin … Skuratov was dismissed from his office.’

Yury Skuratov was sacked after the release of a sex tape in 1999. He says it was a stitch-up to discredit him and his investigation.

He said: ‘This whole thing was obviously political, because in my investigations I came very close to the family of Boris Yeltsin, including via this investigation of the Sibneft privatisation.’

Roman Abramovich remained in the Kremlin inner circle when Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.

The document contains details of another rigged auction two years later, involving a Russian oil company called Slavneft.

Roman Abramovich formed a partnership with another firm to buy Slavneft, but a rival Chinese company was planning to bid almost twice as much.

Many powerful people – from the Kremlin to the Russian parliament – stood to lose out if the Chinese won the auction, the Panorama team claimed.

The document says that a member of the Chinese delegation was kidnapped when they arrived in Moscow for the auction.

‘CNPC, Chinese company, a very strong competitor, had to withdraw from the auction after one of its representatives was kidnapped upon arrival at Moscow Airport and was released only after the company declared its withdrawal’.

The BBC say that the kidnapping story is backed up by independent sources who didn’t know about the document.

Vladimir Milov was Russia’s deputy energy minister in the run up to the Slavneft sale. He didn’t comment on the kidnapping story, but he says senior political figures had already decided that Roman Abramovich’s partnership would win the auction.

‘I said look, the Chinese want to come in and they want to pay a much bigger price. They say it doesn’t matter, shut up, none of your business. It’s already decided. Slavneft goes to Abramovich, the price is agreed. The Chinese will be dragged out somehow.’

There’s no suggestion that Roman Abramovich knew anything about the kidnapping plot, or played any part in it. His lawyers told us that the kidnap claim ‘is entirely unsubstantiated’ and he has ‘no knowledge of such incident’.

Different factions had been fighting for control of Slavneft and there was widespread opposition to the Chinese bid. Whatever the reason for the Chinese withdrawal, Roman Abramovich’s partnership had the only bid left on the table. And they bought Slavneft at a knockdown price.

Roman Abramovich’s lawyers say allegations of corruption in the Slavneft and Sibneft deals are false, and he denies he was protected by Boris Yeltsin.

As the war in Ukraine drags on, and other names are added to the sanctioned list, the pressure on Israel is increasing.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 TV station over the weekend, the US undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, called on Israel to join the group of countries that have sanctioned Russia.

‘What we are asking among other things is for every democracy around the world to join us in the financial and export control sanctions that we have put on Putin,’ she said.

‘You don’t want to become the last haven for dirty money that’s fueling Putin’s wars.’

Aaron David Miller, a now-retired veteran US diplomat, said on Twitter that Nuland’s comments were the ‘toughest battering of Israeli policy since crisis began or of any policy in very long while.’

Israel, founded as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, grants automatic citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, an estimated one million Jews from Russia and other former Soviet republics have moved to Israel.

In recent years, a growing number of tycoons from the former Soviet Union have joined them.

Some, such as former energy magnate Leonid Nevzlin, came after falling out with Putin. Others appeared to have done so as hedges against trouble abroad.

Abramovich, for instance, took Israeli citizenship in 2018 after his British visa was not renewed, apparently as part of British authorities’ efforts to crack down on Putin associates after a former Russian spy was poisoned in England.

Although he appears to spend little time in the country, he has bought some choice real estate, including a home in a trendy Tel Aviv neighborhood reportedly purchased from the husband of Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot.

Some of the tycoons have kept low public profiles, while others have embraced their Jewish roots, emerging as major philanthropists to Jewish causes or investing in Israel’s high-flying technology sector.

With a limited number of places to go, a growing number of Jewish tycoons, especially those with Israeli citizenship, could find themselves spending more time in Israel.

Israeli media have reported private jets belonging to oligarchs coming in and out of the country in recent days. Channel 12 said late Sunday that one of Abramovich’s planes had arrived, though it was unclear if he was onboard.

The billionaire owner of the Chelsea football club and the others are being added to a list of individuals whose assets in the EU – including superyachts and mansions – can be seized and entry into the bloc refused, three diplomats told AFP on Monday.

They are part of a fourth round of EU sanctions against Russia, the details of which were expected to be published later Monday.

The EU’s move follows that of Britain and Canada, which last week put Abramovich on their own sanctions lists. London’s decision put Abramovich’s hastily attempted sale of Chelsea – announced March 2 – on ice.

According to one of the EU diplomats, the stated reason for sanctioning Abramovich was because he ‘is a Russian oligarch who has long and close ties to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,’ to whom he has ‘privileged access’.

He is seen as providing ‘a substantial source of revenue’ to Russia’s government.

On the weekend, Abramovich’s 460-foot-long superyacht Solaris was spotted arriving at a port in Montenegro, which is not part of the EU but has ambitions to join it. The vessel left the Spanish port of Barcelona days earlier.

Abramovich, 55, has a fortune worth $12.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine, and is rumored to own half a dozen yachts. He has also acquired Portuguese and Israeli nationalities.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen last Friday, after an EU summit in France, heralded the latest round of sanctions agreed with partner nations, saying it will ‘further isolate Russia and drain the resources it uses to finance this barbaric war’.

Her trade commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, said on Monday: ‘There’s no one untouchable as you’ll see.’

‘This list of oligarchs is continuously being expanded – not only oligarchs, [but] also high level … state and military officials of Russia,’ Dombrovskis said.

He added that Russians deemed to be ‘actively involved in Russia’s propaganda machine’ were also on the list.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said during a visit to North Macedonia that ‘this will be another major blow’ to Russia’s economy.

Russia’s gross domestic product is forecast to shrink dramatically under the successive rounds of sanctions imposed by the EU and US and their allies, which target the Russian central bank and companies including airlines.

While Israel weighs its moves, Jewish organizations already are taking a closer look at their relations with Russian oligarchs.

Last week, Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, said it was suspending a reported donation of tens millions of dollars from Abramovich ‘in light of recent developments.’

In Ukraine, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, built at the ravine where over 30,000 Jews were massacred in just two days in 1941, said that Fridman, who was born in Ukraine, had resigned from its advisory board due to the sanctions.

Lior Haiat, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said the government has formed a special inter-ministerial committee to study the sanctions issue.

The fate of affected oligarchs is a central part of that mission.

On Monday, Lapid said the ministry was working with other government bodies, including Israel’s Central Bank, to make sure tycoons do not use the country to avert sanctions.

Lapid also has advised his colleagues to keep their distance from the oligarchs.

‘You have to be very careful because those guys have connections and they can call you on the phone and ask you for things,’ Lapid recently told the Cabinet.

‘Don’t commit to anything because it could cause diplomatic damage. Say you can’t help them and give them the number of the Foreign Ministry.’

His comments, first reported in Israeli media, were confirmed by officials who attended the meeting.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing closed Cabinet proceedings.

Israel, one of the few countries that has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, may be able to insulate itself from the international pressure as long as it continues to mediate between the warring sides.

Joining the sanctions would risk drawing Russian ire and jeopardize Israel’s unique role.

Ksenia Svetlova, an international-affairs expert and former Israeli lawmaker born in Russia, said Israel would hold out from taking a stance as long as possible.

‘It depends on what kind of pressure they will exercise against Israel,’ she said. ‘Not voluntarily, certainly.’