Roman Abramovich got rich off the Russian state twice. In the mid-1990s he and Boris Berezovsky bought the oil company Sibneft from the state for about $100 million. In September 2005 the state bought it back. Gazprom paid $13.1 billion.
That is why Britain sanctioned him on March 10, 2022: "a close relationship for decades" with Putin, and what it bought, tax breaks and shares bought from and sold to the state "at favourable rates."
Nobody has ever charged him. Not Jersey, which froze more than $7 billion of his assets in April 2022, named him a suspect, and four years on has charged nothing. Not Britain, which sanctioned him. Not the United States, which never did.
The money sits offshore, in Cyprus trusts and British Virgin Islands companies that fed Western hedge funds. Concord Management, his one-client adviser, had $7.2 billion in 112 private funds when the SEC sued it in 2023.
He lived in London. He bought Chelsea Football Club in 2003 for £140 million. He sold Chelsea in 2022, and more than £2.5 billion from the sale has sat frozen in a UK bank account since, promised to Ukraine.
A London judge ruled in 2012 that he "had privileged access to President Putin"; Putin's own former chief of staff told her court he was not in Putin's "inner circle." Swiss federal police wrote in 2017, in a report made public in 2018, of "suspicion of money laundering and presumed contacts with criminal organisations." Their one specific was a 1990s Geneva probe into a company he controlled that never named him; his lawyer denied it, and no charge followed.
His ex-wife is the Trump connection. Jared and Ivanka spent four days in Russia as Zhukova's guests and sat at the same table as Abramovich at a Moscow fundraiser, Bloomberg reported in 2017.
On Monday the BBC and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that Deloitte Cyprus backdated papers that moved more than $10 billion of his assets off Cypriot company books. Deloitte says it "acts in compliance with applicable laws"; his lawyers say there is "no evidence" he knew.
His name has been in the Epstein files all along.
A New York publicist sent Epstein her list of who was coming to St. Barts for Christmas 2010: Zhukova and Abramovich first, "On their boat"; Ghislaine Maxwell at number 24. A Manhattan broker asked Epstein's accountant whether Epstein would show his 71st Street house to "two of my very wealthy Russians," Abramovich first. On Dec. 24, 2016, Epstein told his accountant: "tell him that roman already saw the house and i have turned down 250 m."
No Epstein investigator, prosecutor or court filing has ever named him. Nobody followed the money.
