It is called ‘Russian Asset Tracker’ and is the initiative launched by the British Guardian in collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and other international media to sift through the many assets around the world attributable to leading figures in the ‘magic circle ‘by Vladimir Putin. The search opened today with the front page of the progressive newspaper reporting over $ 17 billion (€ 15 billion) in assets – including offshore bank accounts, yachts, private jets and luxury properties in London, Tuscany and French Riviera – linked to 35 Russian oligarchs and officials who have close ties to the Kremlin leader, according to the list of names indicated by opponent Alexei Navalny. These are the first results of a vast investigation from which other details will emerge in future editions. The most prominent oligarchs, such as Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov and Oleg Deripaska, as well as other superbillionaires, former senior officials, and state company boyars, almost all already sanctioned by the EU, the United States and Great Britain after the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow troops. Their combined known fortunes are however well in excess of $ 17 billion.
At present, the Russian Asset Tracker has unearthed more than 145 assets consisting of 35 mansions, 43 apartments and another 27 properties, seven yachts, plus 11 private jets and helicopters. Just today the BBC revealed that the luxurious properties owned in London and in the English county of Surrey by Usmanov, an Uzbek-Russian billionaire and one of the main Moscow business oligarchs targeted as functional to the system, seem to have been stolen from the cleaver of British sanctions of power of the Russian president.
According to to which the two mansions, whose value is estimated at 82 million pounds (almost 100 million euros) in total, are no longer formally available to him.
His name had ended up on the stretched blacklist of sanctions by Boris Johnson’s government on March 3, but Usmanov’s homes currently appear unreachable by Kingdom authorities after they have been transferred under the control of a trust.
Source: Ansa
I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years now and I have worked for some of the biggest news websites in the world. My focus has always been on entertainment news, but I also cover a range of other topics. I am currently an author at Global happenings and I love writing about all things pop-culture related.
