BBC’s Panorama, working with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, has reported today that ‘accounts signed off by Deloitte in Cyprus meant assets such as superyachts, mansions and private jets’ disappeared from Roman Abramovich’s company accounts’.
Deloitte declined to comment when contacted by Spear’s, but the BBC reported that Deloitte Cyprus said it ‘acts in compliance with applicable laws’.
The BBC reported that Deloitte Cyprus had ‘prepared draft accounts for 2003’ for Abramovich’s Cypriot company Amiscan Investments which detailed $672 million of assets, including ‘superyachts, mansions and private jets’.
According to the BBC’s report, in 2006, Abramovich’s associates and Meritservus (a corporate services firm owned by Deloitte until 2005) transferred these assets to Amiscan’s parent company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), and ‘backdated the change by three years to make it look like the asset transfer had happened in 2003’.
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The BBC said: ‘Deloitte Cyprus reviewed the backdated documents and said they were “adequate” to allow them to remove the assets from Amiscan’s accounts.’
The BBC also reported that Roman Abramovich’s lawyers said he denies that he evaded tax or concealed his fortune, and that Panorama had provided no evidence he knew about, authorised or directed the falsification of any document and said it was legitimate to rely on advice from professionals.
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Anand Doobay, a partner with sanctions experts Boutique Law, told Spear’s that if what has been reported had taken place in the UK: ‘I certainly think there would be a criminal investigation.’
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‘As to who would conduct it, there are a number of alternatives given what the issues are here,’ he said, ‘but I certainly think that if there was a credible allegation that a professional adviser had been involved in criminal contact with their client, that there would be a criminal investigation.’
Doobay added: ‘If there is said to be a benefit from the criminal offences which may have occurred in Cyprus then dealing with that benefit may be money laundering.’
‘That could give rise to investigations in relation to money laundering in other countries where assets may be, but also could give rise to a risk that civil action could be taken to try and forfeit assets,’ he said.
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David Pickstone, head of Stewarts’ tax litigation and resolution team, told Spear’s that Cyprus may take a reputational hit from the reports, but that the country is very different today.
‘A lot of the old Abramovich-type money that was in Cyprus before the Ukraine war has now left and is in the process of leaving and a lot of those quite opaque shell company structures have been shut down as a result of the Cypriot government’s approach,’ he said.
What is likely to happen now, Pickstone said, is ‘a sort of musical chairs game of finding the right person to blame’.
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A criminal investigation into Abramovich’s financial affairs by the authorities in Jersey is currently ongoing, with £5.3 billion of his assets frozen in the Channel Island. Abramovich’s lawyers filed a claim to the European court of human rights (ECHR) in April this year, arguing the investigation had breached his human rights.
The BBC reported that Abramovich’s lawyers told it that he denies the allegations in the Jersey investigation and said it was ‘undertaken for political purposes’.
