London, Thanasis Gavos
An investigation by the BBC’s Panorama show on Monday night claimed that the beginning of the accumulation of Roman Abramovich’s vast fortune was done in an opaque way.
Citing a copy of a document from the Russian legal services, the show reported that in 1995 the Russian tycoon bought the oil company Sibneft at an auction in the Russian state for just 250 250 million.
The document, a product of a failed prosecutorial investigation, states that the Russian government lost $ 2.7 billion in the transaction.
Roman Abramovich sold the same company back to the Russian state ten years later for $ 13 billion.
According to the BBC, in a trial in London in 2012 against him in 1995 by his partner Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich actually admitted that he had given Berezovsky $ 10 million to bribe a Kremlin official to acquire the S .
The legal document adds that the competent financial crimes service wanted to file a charge of fraud against Mr. Abramovich. The case did not proceed, however, as then-prosecutor Yuri Skuratov told the BBC camera camera that Abramovich was a bodyguard for then-President Yeltsin. In fact, as the show revealed, Abramovich actually found more than half of the money for the purchase of Sibneft from the Russian government itself through a pre-arranged bank loan.
Skuratov was fired in 1999 when a sex tape with the same protagonist was released. As he claimed on the show, it was a set up operation to deconstruct his research.
The BBC stressed that Abramovich remained in the Kremlin’s inner circle when Vladimir Putin took over the reins in 2000.
Two years later he joined a joint venture bought by another oil company, Slavneft. There was also interest in the company from a Chinese group, but a member of the Chinese delegation was abducted when he arrived in Moscow for the auction.
There is no doubt that Abramovich knew about the abduction, but then-Russian Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov told Panorama that senior political officials had decided from the outset that Slavneft would end up with Roman Abramovich.
The lawyers of the Russian oligarch, who is now subject to severe sanctions by the baby government, reject any suspicion of illegal actions that led to the acquisition of property by their client.
The show also featured a report by the Spanish Organized Crime Service from 2010 describing Abramovich as Putin’s “manager of private financial interests.”
Mr Milov commented that Roman Abramovich might be sharing his fortune with the Russian president, who “would never, ever give anything to anyone if he had no direct financial interest”.
Mr Abramovich’s lawyers have said their client denies allegations that he was protected by Yeltsin and now Putin, or that he is acting as the “financial director” of the current Russian president.
The Spanish petition, however, was cited in a debate in the House of Commons on sanctions against oligarchs following the Russian invasion of Ukraine by former Conservative Minister David Davis.
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