Leak reveals majority interest in Roman Abramovich’s nearly $1 billion art collection was transferred to his ex-wife ahead of sanctions
by marketrent
Leak reveals majority interest in Roman Abramovich’s nearly $1 billion art collection was transferred to his ex-wife ahead of sanctions
by marketrent
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Chelsea’s former owner Roman Abramovich declined The Guardian’s request for comment, and ex-wife Dasha Zhukova declined to comment on the record about a private collection of more than 350 pieces:^1
>The collection includes works by Monet, Degas, Matisse, Picasso and Magritte; Russian modernists; and British contemporary artists such as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and David Hockney.
>All are owned by Seline-Invest, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and later redomiciled to Jersey. It’s controlled by Ermis Trust Settlement, a trust set up in Cyprus in 2010 for the sole benefit of Abramovich, according to The Guardian.
>Abramovich has long downplayed his relationship with Putin — and emphatically disputed any financial ties to the president.
>Earlier this year, though, an ICIJ investigation, which was also based on leaked MeritServus documents obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets and shared with news organizations, identified Abramovich at the center of a financial transaction of clear personal significance to the Russian leader.
Ukraine published a list of the artworks today:^2
>Russian oligarchs use works of art to avoid and circumvent sanctions, preserve, and conceal their wealth.
>The best way to counteract this is to make information about the works of art owned by sanctioned persons public.
^1 https://www.icij.org/investigations/russia-archive/leak-reveals-majority-interest-in-roman-abramovichs-nearly-1-billion-art-collection-was-transferred-to-his-ex-wife-ahead-of-sanctions/
^2 https://nazk.gov.ua/en/news/war-art-the-nacp-published-a-private-collection-of-works-of-art-of-russian-oligarch-abramovich-worth-almost-us-1-billion/