Crime12 October, 20262 min read
Panorama Says Deloitte Cyprus Helped Roman Abramovich Evade Tax With Falsified Documents
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Deloitte Cyprus allegedly falsified documents to conceal Abramovich's wealth and evade taxes. Assets worth about $672 million, including yachts, mansions and jets, vanished from accounts.
7 outlets told this the same way.
Panorama finds falsified accounts
BBC Panorama said Deloitte helped falsify documents to hide Roman Abramovich's wealth and evade tax, with accounts signed off by Deloitte in Cyprus showing assets such as superyachts, mansions and private jets worth $672m (£508m) vanished from Abramovich's company accounts. Barrister Andrew Mitchell KC told the BBC that Panorama's evidence showed the scheme was "straightforward" tax evasion and "it couldn't be more blatant". Roman Abramovich's lawyers denied the allegations, saying Panorama provided no evidence he knew about, authorised or directed the falsification of any document and that it was legitimate to rely on advice from professionals.
Deloitte Cyprus said it "acts in compliance with applicable laws" and the findings were revealed after a joint investigation between BBC Panorama and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The leak included thousands of documents about Abramovich's finances and a network of offshore companies administered from Cyprus between 1995 and 2022.
Backdating and missing assets
A backdated paperwork example in 2006 showed a new Cyprus transparency law threatened to expose Abramovich's wealth and Deloitte Cyprus had prepared draft accounts for 2003 for his Cypriot company Amiscan Investments. The accounts detailed $672m of luxury property, including a mansion in West Sussex, a luxury flat in London and an estate in the south of France, plus helicopters, private jets and a small fleet of boats including the $147.5m Pelorus. Abramovich's associates and Meritservus decided to rewrite history by transferring the assets to Amiscan's parent company in the British Virgin Islands and backdating the change by three years to make it look like the asset transfer had happened in 2003.
Deloitte Cyprus reviewed the backdated documents and said they were "adequate" to allow them to keep the details secret. The leaked files also raised questions about the integrity of some of Abramovich's professional advisers, including Deloitte Cyprus and MeritServus.
Legal denials and ongoing probes
Roman Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK government in 2022 as an associate of President Vladimir Putin and forced to sell Chelsea Football Club. £5.4bn of Abramovich's assets remain frozen in Jersey and a criminal investigation has been going on for four years. Abramovich's lawyers told the BBC he denies the allegations in the Jersey investigation and said it was "undertaken for political purposes."
The Guardian said new analysis of leaked corporate records uncovers what appears to be a long-running strategy of backdating documents to create a paper trail showing that agreements and transactions had taken place years earlier. Andrew Mitchell KC described the scheme as a "blatant move to protect from legitimate taxation assets" and said it would amount to "straightforward" tax evasion.