News
The children of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, 30-year-old Arkady and 31-year-old Anna, are both Lithuanian citizens, according to a joint report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Siena. The businessman's children's documents were found in the Cyprus Confidential investigation.
In 2018, Abramovich spent a week in Lithuania, sparking speculation about his potential citizenship. Local media suggested he was exploring the possibility because his grandparents were born near the Lithuanian town of Taurage, which could be a basis for obtaining a Lithuanian passport.
Investigators confirmed that at least two of Abramovich's children held Lithuanian passports. A leaked photo from Cypriot company Meritservus revealed Arkady Abramovich's Lithuanian passport, issued in 2013 and expiring on December 5, 2023.
The journalists also published an image of a document from one of the Cypriot legal entities listing Anna and Arkady Abramovich as beneficiaries with Lithuanian citizenship. Other members of the Abramovich family on the list of beneficiaries have British passports.
In early 2023, a report by The Guardian confirmed that Roman Abramovich had redistributed most of his wealth to his children before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The leaked documents raised questions about whether changes to trusts holding billions of dollars of assets were made in an attempt to shield the oligarch’s vast fortune from sanctions and freezes.