Britain announced sanctions Wednesday against those it says helped sanctioned Russian oligarchs to hide their assets. Leading the list was a Cyprus provider of shell corporations that disguised the investments of billionaire Roman Abramovich in the U.S. cannabis industry and other sectors, as Barron’s reported in January.
The U.K.’s Foreign Office imposed asset freezes, travel bans, and trust service sanctions against Demetris Ioannides and his Cyprus trust provider Meritservus HC Limited., saying Ioannides was “responsible for crafting the murky offshore structures which Abramovich used to hide over £760 million assets ahead of being sanctioned following Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
The announcement described Ioannides as a “financial fixer.” Also sanctioned were a Cypriot attorney that the U.K. says was at the center of trusts and offshore companies holding assets for a second Russian billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, and relatives of other sanctioned oligarchs that the U.K. says have acted as proxies to hide sanctioned assets.
The U.S. said it was sanctioning Usmanov’s so-called facilitation network in conjunction with the U.K. Usmanov’s company, USM Holdings, said in a statement quoted by multiple media outlets that it plans to challenge the U.K. sanctions as unlawful.
“We are closing the net on the Russian elite and those who try to help them hide their money for war,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, in the announcement. “Together with our international partners the U.K. will continue to crack down on those who are supporting the war.”
Our January report showed how Meritservus supplied shell companies and directors to hide Abramovich’s identity as he invested hundreds of millions of dollars as an early investor in U.S. cannabis businesses—and other industries like investment banking, and oil and gas. Just before Russia invaded Ukraine, Abramovich placed billions of dollars worth of assets in trusts for his children.
Barron’s examined 20 years worth of Meritservus records, along with other journalists organized by the nonprofit Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Ioannides and Meritservus didn’t respond to a request for comment on Wednesday, or to queries we made in January. Abramovich has denied that he is connected to the Russian government and is challenging sanctions in the European Union. He hasn’t been sanctioned in the U.S.
Write to Bill Alpert at william.alpert@barrons.com
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