Three weeks before the start of the war in Ukraine, oligarch Roman Abramovich ceded 1% of the Cyprus Ermis Trust Settlement to his ex-wife Daria Zhukova, and she began to own 51% of the company, which includes paintings by Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso. This follows from a joint investigation by Important Stories and The Guardian.
The Cyprus trust was established back in 2010, when, as journalists write, Abramovich himself was its only beneficiary. In recent years, Ermis Trust Settlement controls the company Seline-Invest, established in the British Virgin Islands, and then moved to the island of Jersey.
The latter company owns a collection of paintings by Abramovich. With reference to leaked files from the Cypriot business registrar MeritServus, the publications write that by 2018, Seline-Invest had 369 pieces of art worth $962 million. Among them were paintings by Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Rene Magritte and Kazimir Malevich.
In 2021, the beneficial shares in the Ermis Trust Settlement were divided equally between Abramovich and Zhukova — this was decided after the divorce. At the same time, on February 4, 2022, the oligarch lost 1% to his ex-wife, so the shares became 49% and 51%. According to Important Stories, in some countries this could reduce the risk of asset seizure due to sanctions.
“It is unfortunate that the trust holding the paintings appears to be no longer able to make them available to museums. The sanctions were introduced for obvious reasons. It turns out that Abramovich’s investments in art have led to the fact that people are now deprived of the opportunity to see some of the greatest works of our time,” said Georgina Adam, an expert in the field of art markets.
Journalists recalled that last year in the British The National Gallery opened an exhibition of Lucian Freud. It was missing “several of his iconic paintings,” which, according to the publications, are in Abramovich’s collection.
On March 15, 2022, the European Union announced a fourth package of sanctions against Russia, which included Roman Abramovich. The restrictions included freezing assets, a ban on entry into the European Union, and a ban on citizens and companies from the European Union entering into transactions with sanctioned individuals. Other countries have also introduced restrictions against the oligarch.
Shortly before this, Abramovich announced his decision to sell the Chelsea football club, having previously transferred control over it to the board of trustees. The entrepreneur later sold the club for £2.3 billion. The oligarch insisted on transferring part of the money to Russians affected by the war.