[Cross-posted from European Tribune – where dissent is NOT troll rated!]
He is an Israeli citizen now with his invested wealth he escapes US sanctions and British investigation into the source of his billions. Furthermore by moving residency to Tel Aviv, he gets tax exemption over 10 years … so he belongs to the good guys now: well done Roman!
Roman Abramovich gets Israeli citizenship | DW |
Earlier this month, Britain said it would review the long-term visas of super-rich Russians after the near-fatal attacks. Abramovich had been in the process of renewing his UK visa after it expired last month, but it had been taking longer than usual.
Under the Law of Return, Israel grants automatic citizenship to every Jew, or
child or grandchild of a Jew, giving them the “right of return” to live in Israel.From Kensington to Tel Aviv
More below the fold …
Abramovich’s London home is a stuccoed mansion in the upscale Kensington Palace Gardens, known locally as “millionaires’ row.” His new mansion, in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neve Tzedek, is a former hotel Versano previously owned by Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot, according to the Israeli website Ynet.
How rich is Abramovich? Britain’s Sunday Times puts his wealth at 9.3 billion pounds (€10.7 billion, $12.5 billion). He is ranked 140 on the 2018 billionaires list published by Forbes. The business magazine currently puts his net worth at $11.5 billion.
How did he get so rich? According to the Financial Times, Abramovich made his money “through the privatization of state natural resources assets in Russia’s turbulent 1990s, later selling them back to the Kremlin at enormous profits.”
UK government ‘turns a blind eye’ to dirty Russian money | DW |
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament slammed the government for “turning a blind eye” to the role London’s financial center plays in laundering the proceeds of Russian corruption. The result is that it helps the Kremlin finance its aggressive foreign policy.
In a report published Monday, the committee said that despite the tough rhetoric over the nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain earlier this year, for President Vladimir Putin’s allies it was “business as usual” in the UK.
“The use of London as a base for the corrupt assets of Kremlin-connected individuals is now linked to a wider Russia strategy with implications for the UK’s national security,” said the committee.
According to the committee, Russian money hidden in British assets and laundered through City of London financial institutions damages the government’s efforts to take a tough stance against Moscow’s aggressive foreign policy.
Britain’s financial center has benefited mightily from the massive flight of Russian cash since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and London remains the Western capital of choice for the oligarchs and Russian officials who flaunt their wealth across Europe’s luxury destinations.
Roman Abramovich granted Israeli citizenship | The Guardian |
Abramovich, who is Jewish and has been a regular visitor to Israel, has donated millions to Israeli research and development projects and invested in local firms. Ynet said he had bought a former hotel in Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean coast.
Israel’s media has speculated for days that the businessman was seeking citizenship. The Times of Israel said Abramovich would be exempt from paying tax in Israel for 10 years and would not need to explain the sources of his wealth in that time.
It is believed the British government would have required some financial disclosures if Abramovich’s UK visa was to be renewed.
There have also been suggestions that Abramovich fell foul of tighter regulations imposed in 2015. His failure to secure a new tier 1 visa, which allows anyone who invests more than £2m in the British economy to stay for 40 months, comes at a time of heightened tensions between the Russian and UK governments.
From my recent diary @EuroTrib …
Chabad, Vekselberg, Putin and the Schneerson Library
…
In the 1990s, a fire left the garage decrepit and dysfunctional. Following mass restoration efforts it re-opened in 2008, initially to house the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture. And then in 2012, thanks to generous funding from oligarchs like Roman Abramovich and Viktor Vekselberg, from Jewish organisations like FEOR and Chabad Lubavitch — even with the support President Vladimir Putin himself – a site that had once represented another aspect of Soviet state control became home to the world’s largest Jewish museum.
[Source: Free state: Moscow’s Jewish Museum and its quest for an open society]@RepAdamSchiff @MarkWarner Vekselberg owns a stake in Bank of Cyprus, famous for money laundering when Putin was in charge and Wilbur Ross worked there. He does not have Cypriot citizenship unlike Deripaska. _link
— Patricia Heil (@PatTheTerrible) May 4, 2018
Russian oligarchs fond of startups; linking Silicon Valley with Tel Aviv and Moscow
Viktor Vekselberg originally made his wealth in the metals and energy industries, accumulating a net worth now estimated at more than $10 billion. In 2010, the Russian government appointed him to head the Skolkovo project, an international tech hub still under completion on the outskirts of Moscow.
In 2013, the Russian billionaire backed Maxfield Capital, a venture fund operating globally from its offices in Moscow, New York City and Tel Aviv. One of Maxfield’s latest investment went to On Farm, a California-based startup developing an IoT platform to manage farm hardware technologies.
Wilbur Ross shares a business circle with Putin associates | McClatchy – Dec. |
Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as his commerce secretary, has been the top shareholder in a Cypriot bank with deep Russian ties and investors who made their fortunes under Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There’s no indication of any questionable behavior by Ross, but his partners in the bank are sure to attract scrutiny during his Senate confirmation hearing and underscore the financial orbit around Putin that intersects with figures in Trump’s campaign and administration.
Beyond the Russian ties, Bank of Cyprus’ chairman once headed Deutsche Bank, which has repeatedly run afoul of U.S. regulators and is a major lender to the Trump business empire.
Cyprus is often used by Russia’s politically connected businessmen. In a March 2013 report, McClatchy detailed how Russians had come to dominate Cyprus as both customers and providers of financial services. Russian depositors and investors took losses that year in Cyprus when the European debt crisis nearly crumbled major banks.
For an overall view of illicit money stashing in far-away places …
Offshore: A cozy place to hide money
Two years ago, investigative journalists released a trove of documents from a Panamanian law firm that specializes in setting up secret avenues for moving money around offshore havens. The resulting scandal became known as the Panama Papers. Dubious friends of Bill and Hillary Clinton were exposed as users of offshore institutions. The list included Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate and crony of Bill Clinton; Marc Rich, the international fugitive pardoned by Bill Clinton; Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of a Democratic fund-raising scandal during the Clinton years; and the Chagoury Group, a West African developer that pledged a billion dollars to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Transactions linked to that Clinton initiative occurred in havens such as the British Virgin Islands, Isle of Man, Anguilla, Cayman Islands, Bahamas, Hong Kong, Monaco, and Gibraltar.
Note the British accent. London is at the center of much offshore mischief. The Channel Islands — Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man — are havens, along with Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Gibraltar, and former British colonies Hong Kong, Singapore, the Bahamas, Bahrain, and Dubai. But the United States is coming on strong — particularly Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
Diaries related to topic …
○ Calling Putin Anti-Semitic Is Pure BS | Aug. 2014 |
○ Chabad and Schneerson @BooMan
○ Globalisation: Katsyv links Moscow – London – NY – Tel Aviv