Roman Abramovich has long been known for a direct, hard-edged approach to business.
So when the state-owned Russian oil company Slavneft was put on the market in 2002, the Moscow-based oligarch moved quickly.
However, the former Chelsea FC owner appeared to face serious competition. Chinese oil giant CNPC submitted a bid worth twice Abramovich’s £1.86 billion offer, prompting a delegation from Beijing to travel to Russia to complete the purchase.
As the delegation prepared to leave Moscow airport, one of its senior members was reportedly abducted at gunpoint.
The Chinese side withdrew from the auction soon afterwards. The kidnapped executive was released, the delegation boarded the next flight home—and Abramovich secured another discounted acquisition for his multibillion-pound energy empire.
Against the backdrop of allegations surrounding his business dealings—including claims that he stole a trainload of diesel as a young man and paid a £10 million bribe to a Kremlin official—it was perhaps unsurprising that he was linked this week to another alleged financial scheme.
An investigation by the BBC’s Panorama, carried out with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, appears to indicate that Abramovich’s associates worked with Deloitte, the British-headquartered accountancy giant, to falsify documents allegedly designed to conceal parts of his wealth and reduce tax liabilities.
According to the report, the alleged administrative work was handled by the smaller corporate services company MeritServus, while Deloitte approved the resulting accounts.
A BBC Panorama investigation appeared to show associates of former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, pictured, conspired with accountancy firm Deloitte to conceal parts of his wealth
Abramovich was among numerous Russian businessmen who established companies in Cyprus between 1995 and 2022, using the tax haven to hold profits generated in their home country.
The introduction of a Cypriot transparency law requiring company accounts to be made public then threatened to expose details of Abramovich’s substantial wealth.
When the law was introduced, Deloitte Cyprus had already prepared draft accounts for Amiscan Investments, an Abramovich-linked company registered on the island. The firm owned a large collection of his properties and luxury assets.
The holdings included Fyning Hill, a 424-acre estate in West Sussex; a luxury London apartment; the Château de la Croë in the south of France, once owned by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; as well as fleets of superyachts and private jets. Together, the assets were valued at £508 million.
Concerned that details of the portfolio could become public, Abramovich’s associates and MeritServus, described by the BBC as a “corporate services firm”, allegedly decided to “rewrite history”.
MeritServus prepared accounts that purported to show the assets had been transferred to Amiscan’s parent company in the British Virgin Islands in 2003, meaning they would not need to be declared in the same way.
Rather than rejecting the revised figures, Deloitte Cyprus signed off accounts showing that Amiscan held assets worth only $75,000.
MeritServus allegedly used a comparable arrangement in relation to tax on interest generated by two other major Abramovich-linked holdings: $2 billion held by Kravin Investments and $10 billion placed with Electus Investments.
In Electus’s case, the transfer to the British Virgin Islands was allegedly backdated. Public accounts filed in 2006 subsequently listed assets of only $145,000 (£110,000), leaving billions of dollars apparently unaccounted for.
The findings emerged following the 2023 leak known as “Cyprus Confidential”, which exposed more than 3.6 million documents from six Cypriot companies, including MeritServus.
None of the parties involved has admitted wrongdoing.
Deloitte, the world’s biggest accountancy firm, is headquartered in Britain
A law firm representing Abramovich, 59, told the BBC he was ‘not involved in the day-to-day operation of those companies [Amiscan, Kravin and Electus]’ and that, where arrangements were proposed by professional advisers, ‘reliance on that advice was entirely proper and legitimate’.
Deloitte Cyprus said it could not comment because the documents were more than 20 years old and no longer accessible, while MeritServus closed following the Cyprus Confidential leak.
The foundation of Abramovich’s wealth has long been mired in controversy. He made his billions by buying a state-owned oil company in a rigged auction in 1995, paying just £190million for Sibneft, which he sold back to the Russian government for £10billion in 2005 – 52 times what he paid.
A handful of the hustlers who obtained Russia’s ‘family silver’ in deals with then president Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s soon landed ostentatiously on the streets of London.
Deloitte was just one of hundreds of blue-chip organisations that succumbed to the attraction of a quick buck. Private bankers, ‘Magic Circle’ lawyers, top-drawer accountants and high-end estate agents made small fortunes from the ‘New Russians’.
One estate agent described his Russian clients ‘gleefully plonking saddlebags of cash on the desk’.
Sadly, for London’s professional services firms, the Russian gravy train hit the buffers when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Abramovich was forced to sell his beloved Chelsea FC and the £2.5billion proceeds have been held in escrow ever since.
Meanwhile, his UK homes and those of other sanctioned oligarchs are locked in legal limbo and falling into disrepair.
These may prove to be dark days for the Deloittes of this world.
Dominic Midgley is the author of Abramovich, The Billionaire From Nowhere
