The island of Cyprus has gained a dubious reputation as an offshore paradise for oligarchs and corrupt officials from all over the world, including Russia. According to local media estimates, more than 1,000 Russians have Cypriot passports, and the number of firms registered by Russian businessmen is estimated in the tens of thousands.
Although the country is a member of the EU, the local government is in no hurry at all to respond to the international sanctions imposed against Putin’s supporters. Only in January 2023, did Cyprus Finance Minister Konstantinos Petridis report the arrest of Russian deposits for 105 million euros. For comparison, the total amount of funds from the Russian Federation in accounts in Cypriot banks is estimated at 5-6 billion euros.
The situation with property assets is even worse. So far there is not a single case when a house or a yacht of one of the sub-sanctioned Russians was arrested in Cyprus. The Cypriot legislation was set up to hide assets. Local property registers are closed for public access. Chains of ownership are deliberately built long and convoluted to conceal the name of the real owner. And yet, thanks to open databases of other EU countries, we found addresses of more than 20 Russians connected with the Kremlin top brass and big business. Some of them are already under international sanctions. We hope that the rest will gradually join them.
Those already under sanctions
Let’s start with Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnulin, among others responsible for the integration of Crimea, Donbas and other captured territories into the Russian Federation. His daughter Alina, however, prefers to integrate into the Cypriot environment. She is married to the son of the general director of the Novorossiysk port, Yevgeny Kireev, who is also sanctioned, but so far only in Ukraine. The young couple has a mansion in the elite neighborhood of Limassol — Mesovounia villas (see Location ). Usually such cost 2-4 million euros. The opposition Russian media previously wrote that the Khusnulin-Kireyevs own real estate in the Russian Federation through Cypriot offshore companies, but they have so far managed to hide their villa in Cyprus. Maybe it would have been like that if Evgeny Kireev had not decided to set up a «Russian bathhouse» there: he ordered a stove and other equipment from Russia, indicating his Limassol address in the delivery documents.
Marat Khusnulin
Mesovounia villas
Alexander Ponomarenko, co-owner of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, Kyiv’s Ocean Plaza shopping mall, and a close friend and partner of Arkady Rotenberg, «Putin’s wallet,» also has real estate in Cyprus. Ponomarenko is one of Russia’s richest businessmen, but one of the least publicized. The general public heard about him only when it was revealed that he was involved in the construction of a palace for Putin near the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik. The oligarch’s wife, Natalia Rozhkova, has an apartment in the Bayview Gardens complex (Block 1, Apt. No. 5) in Limassol, the «Russian capital» of Cyprus. This is a relatively modest housing, the cost of which does not reach 1 million euros. Perhaps, everything is explained by the fact that the Ponomarenko family prefers to spend the summer at their luxurious villa LA CHABANNE in France. But the French authorities last year imposed an arrest on it. So Cyprus remains a backup option for Ponomarenko. All the more so because he has provided both himself and his family with Cypriot passports.
Alexander Ponomarenko
Bayview Gardens
The former head of Rosneft Eduard Khudainatov has fallen under international sanctions for being the nominee of the companies that own the superyachts Shaherezada (worth 700 million USD) and Amadea (300 million USD). Vladimir Putin is believed to be the real owner of the former and oligarch Alisher Usmanov the latter. Khudainatov’s fortune is not enough to own such yachts. But they are more than enough to buy a villa in Cyprus. The nuance, however, is that the owner of the villa (on the territory of the Coral Seas Villas complex in the Coral Bay area near Paphos) is Khudainatov’s unmarried wife Marina Amaffi. They have been living together for many years and have children in common, but have not officially registered their marriage. This was a shrewd move on Khudainatov’s part, as it now helps circumvent sanctions.
Eduard Khudainatov
Coral Seas Villas
Among the numerous foreign assets of Russian aluminum king Oleg Deripaska, the international holding of investigative journalists OCCRP in Cyprus found a villa and office space with an estimated value of 650 thousand USD and 3 million USD respectively. The offices are located in the most imposing skyscraper of Cyprus The Oval, and the villa — in Kouklia, near one of the tourist highlights of Cyprus — the Bay of Aphrodite. Accordingly, the complex of expensive residences that have been built here is called Aphrodite Hills. And it seems that Deripaska (or close members of his team) has more than one villa here. Among the residents of the VIP-village, we found a 19-year-old Moscow student and Cypriot by passport Peter Mukhamedshin. He owns a house at Achaion 41. Since its parameters do not match the image on the OCCRP website, we are talking about two different buildings. What does this have to do with Deripaska? It has to do with the fact that at one time he registered real estate in the United States for Oleg Mukhamedshin, RusAl’s Director of Strategy and Development (we wrote more about this in the article Deripaska’s precedent: will it happen to everyone). So young Pyotr Mukhamedshin is the son of the same Oleg Mukhamedshin. Therefore, there is a reasonable question whether the house in question belongs to him or his boss.
Oleg Deripaska
The Oval
State Duma deputy Valery Gartung, who is also the owner of several machine-building enterprises in Russia (Chelyabinsk Forge and Press Plant, Ural Company of Construction Cranes, etc.), has registered his house in Cyprus with his son Dmitry. The mansion with a swimming pool is located in the quiet area of Agios Tikhonas near Limassol with the address 38 Artemidos. In the fall of 2022, the factories of the Gartung family announced additional recruitment of workers to fulfill the defense order. They, in particular, produce tractors for military-tracked vehicles, parts for tanks, etc.
Not far away in the cottage town of Amathusa Coastal Heights, the owner of the Delo group of companies, Sergei Shishkarev, has a villa. Earlier he also sat in the State Duma for three terms, but now he prefers to make money. His main business is railroad transportation, mainly through the port of Novorossiysk, where he has his own grain and container terminals. Shishkarev’s companies are involved in the export of stolen grain from Ukraine. One of his companies owns several land plots near Gelendzhik, which are now occupied by the famous «Putin’s Palace» and the surrounding area.
Andrei Molchanov was also once (until 2017) a deputy, though in the Federation Council. Now he is one of the largest players in the construction business of the Russian Federation, a regular on the Forbes 100 list, and the owner of LSR Holding. His stepfather Yuri Molchanov is a close acquaintance of Putin. They both came from the KGB and both supervised international relations at Leningrad University. Molchanov Sr. later worked as deputy governor of St. Petersburg and helped his adopted son develop his own business. Last year Andrei Molchanov’s assets in Ukraine — Obukhov concrete plant Aerok — were arrested. But the Cypriot villa of Molchanov was not arrested — it is located in the village of Peyia, Dervenakion Street. Nor was his Cypriot passport, obtained in 2017, taken away from him.
In February 2023 his Cypriot real estate was unexpectedly lit by the Russian state airline Aeroflot. On its website, there was an announcement of a sale from another apartment building in the city of Larnaca, the market value of which is estimated at 1,945,000 euros. The house is not new, built back in 1990, so it requires major repairs. But it is located in the central area of Skala (Shakespeare Street), 500 meters from the beach. It has 24 apartments with a total area of more than 2 thousand square meters. m. And to it is added a plot of land on 834 squares. It would be scandalous if the Cypriot authorities would now allow Aeroflot to sell this property quietly. Instead of seizing it.
Those who should be under sanctions
The Russian bank VTB, often informally referred to as «the Kremlin’s bank,» is on every possible sanctions list. But only its head Andrei Kostin has fallen under personal restrictions. At the same time, other top managers of the bank can still safely use their assets abroad, including in Cyprus. For example, VTB Vice President Vitaly Buzoverya, VTB Management Board member Victoria Vanurina, VTB Capital CEO Alexey Yakovitsky, and VTB Capital General Director Vitaly Buzoverya have bought houses in the same Coral Seas Villas complex where Eduard Khudainatov’s wife lives from time to time. Anatoly Voronetsky, Deputy Director of VTB Leasing, has a villa in the same Aphrodite Hills complex as Oleg Deripaska. Kirill Zimarin, a former VTB manager and now CEO of RCB Bank in Cyprus, owns apartments in Paraklisia village near Limassol. Zimarin played a key role in getting VTB’s Cypriot assets out of sanctions. On February 24, 2022, companies nominally owned by him bought 46.29% of RCB, previously owned by Russian bank VTB. Since both the buying companies and Zimarin himself have Cypriot residency, the Cypriot bank continues to operate because de jure it no longer has any connection to the Russian Federation, although its entire independence is sewn with white threads.
Andrei Kostin
Strange as it may seem, among the dozens of Russian oligarchs against whom sanctions have already come into force in the world, there was no place for Russia’s richest woman, Yelena Baturina, ex-wife of the late Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Last year she completed the construction of Symbol Residence, an elite residential complex on the first line by the sea in Limassol. Apartments in this building have an area of 350 square meters. According to realtors’ estimates, the developer invested approximately 40 million euros in this project. Threads to the highest Kremlin elites lead from another Cypriot developer born in Russia — Sergei Kozlov. A former employee of the Russian Embassy in Cyprus and a confidant of the previous Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, he became the first Russian to register a construction company in Cyprus — Lemestia Developers Limited. Now he and his wife and son have a dozen such companies. Through these firms that the top brass of the Russian Foreign Ministry owns real estate in Cyprus (they are Primakov’s widow and daughter, and the current Minister Sergei Lavrova, and its speaker Maria Zakharova, etc.). In particular, we are talking about the LCD Marathon Beach on Amothountos Street in Limassol. But not only. Now, say, Kozlov’s company Halemo Limited is building in the resort village of Pyrgos 44-apartment complex Meridien Plaza with a tennis court and swimming pool.
The former wife of oligarch Roman Abramovich, the mother of 5 of his children — Irina Abramovich (Malandina) bought apartments in the highest building of the Cypriot capital — building 360 Nicosia, built in 2020. It has a total of 34 floors. Irina Abramovich chose the 19th floor.
Irina Abramovich
360 Nicosia
Andrei Klinovsky, son-in-law of former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and a major Russian landowner in the Rublevskoye highway (Moscow Region), a popular area among oligarchs, has an apartment in the Azur Residence (Vasileos Georgiou I) in Cyprus. It is practically in the center of Limassol on the seashore.
Arkady Kukin, financial director of the Sakhalin Shipping Company, owns a seaside house in the Pareklisia neighborhood. Igor Kim, the head of the board of Expobank, has an estate in the village of Tsada. Apartments in Limassol were bought the family of Vladimir Perekrestov, owner of the airline S7, Joseph Sandler, founder of the oil transport company Transbunker, and Alexander Zanadvorov, owner of the shopping center «Okhotny Ryad» on Manezh Square in Moscow. Another Russian retailer Sergey Lomakin (known in Ukraine for having once developed a chain of cheap shoe markets «Tsentrobyl») bought the Cypriot soccer club Pafos with all its infrastructure, respectively.
The above-mentioned objects are just a drop in the ocean of Russian real estate in Cyprus. For investigators, there is still a field of unplowed work here. But even this drop totals several tens of millions of euros, which can be alienated to the repatriation fund of Ukraine.