Cyprus says US experts to help probe Russia sanction busters

Experts from the United States have arrived in Cyprus to help police investigate cases where Russian oligarchs were allegedly enabled to bypass sanctions, a Cypriot official said Monday (4 November).

Cypriot government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis told state radio the US specialists would assist local authorities in probing Russia sanction violations and recent leaks by the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists (ICIJ).

Following the leaks, European Union member Cyprus vowed to probe the allegations that it was a hub for laundering money, enabling Russian oligarchs to violate sanctions.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides then invited the American experts.

The local Politis daily newspaper has said specialists from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), part of the United States Treasury Department, are probing 29 cases.

According to the investigation published last month by ICIJ and 68 media partners, the eastern Mediterranean island “plays an even bigger role than was commonly known in moving dirty money for Russian President Vladimir Putin and
other brutal dictators”.

It is not the first time that Cyprus has been labelled a haven for the illicit gains of Russian oligarchs.

But the Cypriot government says it has taken stringent action against money laundering and sanctions-busting since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

In April, Cyprus’s financial commissioner said the country had cracked down on those named by the US and Britain for allegedly helping Russian oligarchs bypass sanctions on Moscow because of the Ukraine war.

That came after Britain and the US sanctioned Cyprus nationals and companies for allegedly helping Russian oligarchs hide their assets in the wake of the Ukraine invasion.

ICIJ said the island’s dependence on Russian and other foreign money carried consequences only now being realised.

It said an “astonishing flood of foreign money”, mostly Russian, has poured into the island over decades, leaving Cyprus with a reputation as a “shady financial hub”.

The Cyprus Confidential probe took eight months and explored Russia’s “long-standing hegemony” over Cyprus’s deeply intertwined worlds of politics and finance.

The ICIJ analysed more than 3.6 million documents. The leaked internal records, dating from the mid-1990s to April 2022, included confidential background checks, organisational charts, financial statements, bank account applications and email messages.

The Cyprus Central Bank said earlier this year that authorities closed 43,000 shell companies and 123,000 “suspicious” bank accounts since 2018, and that only 2.2% of all bank deposits on the island currently belong to Russians.

Cyprus is home to a large Russian diaspora. Limassol on the south coast — often nicknamed “Moscow on the Med” — has long been a magnet for Russian speakers.

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