Over the weekend, Cypriot publication Politis released a list of 77 investors whose “golden” passports were revoked by the country’s authorities. The daily obtained and published the official list of revoked citizenships, including the names of the holders and the service providers — such as law firms and audit offices — that facilitated their applications. Earlier reports highlighted individual cases of Cypriot passports being revoked, but the latest list published by Politis is the most extensive so far.

Archived link

It includes several Russians from the Forbes Billionaires List, such as:

  • aluminum magnate and Rusal founder Oleg Deripaska;
  • Igor Kesaev, owner of the Mercury Group and Megapolis Group (Russia’s leading tobacco distributor), shareholder of the Degtyarev weapons plant;
  • Mikhail Gutseriev, main shareholder of the Safmar Group;
  • Alexey Kuzmichev, one of the founders of Alfa Group;
  • Alexander Ponomarenko, construction tycoon, former chairman of the board of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport;
  • Vadim Moshkovich, longtime chairman of agro-industrial firm Rusagro and former Russian MP;
  • Sergey Lomakin, co-founder of Russian discount retail chain Fix Price, owner of Cypriot football club Pafos FC.

[…]

According to the independent Russian media outlet Agentstvo, the list includes four former owners or top managers of Probusinessbank and the Life Group: Alexander Zheleznyak, Yaroslav Alekseev, Alexander Lomov, and Eduard Panteleev.

An investigation by The Insider released in October exposed Leontiev and Zheleznyak as key figures in a money laundering scheme that funneled hundreds of billions of dollars offshore on behalf of Russian officials. It was previously reported that the Life Group had assets in Cyprus, while Alekseev and Sergey Leontiev had obtained Cypriot citizenship.

Passports issued to the investors’ family members have also been revoked. The exact number is listed in parentheses in the images below.

[…]

The grounds on which each decision was made were not indicated. Politis cited the Cyprus Council of Ministers as providing three main reasons for the withdrawal of citizenships: Submission of false or misleading information, criminal records of the applicants, and failure to meet the program’s terms and conditions.

According to [Cypriotic media outlet] Politis, twenty investors that received “golden passports” are facing charges in their home countries for crimes including corruption, collusion, tax evasion, embezzlement, fraud, money laundering, involvement in criminal organizations, and illegal gambling operations.

[…]