Putin ally moved money as sanctions came in

In the days after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Western governments threatening imminent sanctions against President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a Cyprus professional services firm called Abacus Ltd. quietly transferred $5 million out of an account it managed on behalf of the powerful Russian billionaire Petr Aven, civil court records show.

A prominent Putin confidant, Aven had helped build Alfa Group, a sprawling Russian financial services giant and the biggest privately owned bank in the country. Despite his immense wealth, Aven lived discreetly, preferring to spend his time before the war on his plush estate outside London. He became widely known after being named in the 2019 Mueller report into Russian interference in U.S. elections as having offered himself as a conduit between Putin and Donald Trump’s transition team shortly after the 2016 presidential election.

Aven has met Putin regularly, including soon after the invasion on February 24th, 2022.

A few days later, his mansion, known as Ingliston House, needed money.

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According to previously unpublished court documents filed by the National Crime Agency (NCA), the U.K.’s top law enforcement agency for international financial crime, the payment was initiated on Feb. 28, the same day EU sanctions were imposed on Aven. The money arrived days later in an account at a different bank controlled by Aven’s assistant, Stephen Gater, who manages Aven’s large property in the posh London suburb of Surrey.

The transfer was one of dozens allegedly executed on Aven’s behalf to and from accounts belonging to or controlled by Gater, as well as others belonging to Aven’s wife.

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The payments, the first and biggest of which was made from an Austrian bank by Abacus, based in the Cypriot capital of Nicosia. were then split between personal and business accounts registered in the U.K., just as sanctions came down on Aven after the invasion, according to the U.K. court documents.

The documents – filed in London’s High Court and other U.K. courts – provide a window into the fraught world of sanctions enforcement as Western governments use their control over the financial system to try to punish the Russian regime and its power brokers for the unprovoked Ukraine invasion. The clutch of payments as sanctions were descending shows how oligarchs, with help from financial professionals, can pre-empt or, if the NCA’s allegations are proven, even evade Western sanctions.

In a document filed last year marked “official – sensitive,” the NCA alleges many of the transfers were made for Aven’s benefit and in violation of U.K. sanctions laws. Payments made by Gater from his personal and business accounts included those for salaries of Aven’s house staff as well as what the NCA calls “large payments” for Aven’s personal expenses.

The NCA also alleges that a payment in breach of sanctions was made to Gater’s personal account for a Bentley Bentayga – a luxury off-road vehicle that retails for more than $200,000 – that was previously owned by a company under Aven’s control. Through a search of two properties, one owned by Aven, the other by Gater, the NCA found cash worth nearly $100,000. The “vast majority” of the money was found at Gater’s property, with “a significant quantity” in vacuum-packed bank notes in a range of currencies, the NCA said. The rest of the cash was found at Aven’s Ingliston House, the agency added.

Many questions about the money remain unanswered, the NCA said. “Gater and his representatives have not provided any detail about who is the owner of the detained cash. No parties have stated ownership of any of the cash seized at this time and no explanation has been provided as to its origin or intended purpose,” the agency said in a court filing.

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“This sterling cash is suspected to have been obtained after the invasion of Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022 when sanctions on Aven were a clear possibility, and potentially after Aven was sanctioned in the UK on the 15th of March 2022 when it would have been clear that access to bank accounts would be further restricted,” the NCA said. A London judge on Nov. 3 granted the agency’s request to continue the confiscation of the cash for another six months.

The court records were obtained by UK non-profit Spotlight on Corruption, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, after petitioning the judge in the civil trial between Aven, Gater and the NCA.

A separate, and larger, collection of 3.6 million confidential documents from six Cyprus offshore services firms and a Latvian company provide a broader view of Aven’s wealth and his use of offshore structures – including some discussed in the NCA case. The records, among them secret trust and company ownership documents, emails, invoices and wire transfers, were obtained as part of Cyprus Confidential, an eight-month investigation into Cyprus’ role as a crucial financial hub that in the last two decades has helped to consolidate the power of the Putin regime.

Taken together, the NCA and other records show the key role played by Cyprus in helping Putin allies like Aven shield their assets from Western sanctions. The confidential documents also show the role Abacus played in helping to administer Aven’s wealth, estimated by Forbes at $4.2 billion.

Aven’s lawyers have denied all allegations of wrongdoing in the court filings from 2022. They declined to answer detailed questions from ICIJ. A lawyer for Gater did not reply to a request for comment but in court filings denied any wrongdoing on his client’s behalf.