James Oliver, Harriet Agerholm and Will Dahlgreen
BBC News and File on 4 Surveys
Bbc
It was Christmas 2011, a year after Roman Abramovich took delivery of his new Superyacht, Eclipse. But it seemed that the oligarch would not use it during the festive period – the files show that it had been chartered by a company based in the British Virgin Islands.
And yet, this year’s Christmas day’s photographs show Mr. Abramovich under the Caribbean sun, standing on the swimming platform at the back of the yacht, with the great letter-e of Eclipse behind him.
Charter files like this were part of a decade program to induce the tax authorities misleading, now discovered in a BBC and Bureau of Investigative Journalism investigation.
The program falsely presented the fleet of Russian oligarch yachts as a commercial rental operation, to dodge millions of euros on VAT on their purchase and operating costs.
“There was a tax evasion,” said the BBC, a lawyer and Italian professor and professor Tommaso di Tanno. “It’s criminal.”
In a press release, the lawyers of Mr. Abramovich – who would have now divided his time between Istanbul, such as Aviv and the Russian Sochi complex – said that he had “always obtained professional expert and independent legal tax advice” and “Act in accordance” to “.
The billionaire, who was sanctioned by the United Kingdom in March 2022 for his link with the Vladimir Putin regime, bought five luxury yachts in the 2000s that were involved in the tax regime.
Among them was the pelorus of 115 million (377 feet), which he would have lent to the footballer of Chelsea John Terry for his honeymoon in 2007 – and to Eclipse, who, at 162.5 m (533 feet), was Formerly the largest private yacht in the world and was worth around $ 700 million (559 million pounds sterling).
The regime to dodge the tax on yachts – and other secrets of the corporate empire of the sanctioned oligarch – is exposed in more than 400,000 files and 72,000 e -mails disclosed by a supplier of Cypriot business services, Meritservus.
They show how Meritservus administered companies in the oligarch through a global network of companies belonging to a series of trustees of which Mr. Abramovich was the beneficiary.
The BBC and its media partners report on the files that have been disclosed since 2023 within the framework of the International Consortium for the Confidential Investigative Journalists’ Confidential Survey. We previously revealed the financial links of Mr. Abramovich with one of the closest associates of Mr. Putin, accused of having held the wealth of the president.
The files reveal how the advisers of Mr. Abramovich helped him avoid paying huge tax invoices on the operating costs of yachts in EU waters using companies to hire them for himself or other companies he controlled.
The documents show how the five yachts were rented to a company in Cyprus called Blue Ocean Yacht Management, which chartered them in a handful of companies in the British Virgin Islands which seemed independent – but which were in fact controlled by Mr. Abramovich.
‘Aware of the risks’
The program to dodge VAT in Cyprus was presented in a memorandum revealing 2005 on the “operating structure” proposed for the management of Mr. Abramovich’s yachts.
“We want to avoid paying VAT on the purchase price of yachts and, as far as possible, to avoid paying VAT on goods and services provided to yachts,” wrote the author of the note, Jonathan Holloway, then director of Blue Ocean.
You can hear the file on 4 surveys: Abramovich, Yachts and Dodge tax on BBC Radio 4 at 8:00 p.m. Tuesday January 28 and at 11:00 am on Wednesday 29 January – or on the BBC Sounds
Although Blue Ocean and the companies that hire yachts all belong to Mr. Abramovich’s trustees, they were intended to appear unrelated “so that an investigator verifying our operation would see him as a legitimate structure”, wrote Mr. Holloway in The memo to some of the associates closest to Mr. Abramovich.
Holloway warned them that they should be “aware of the risks”. He wrote: “We must all recognize that a determined investigator could possibly discover that this is an internal structure with the possible consequences that this would cause.”
Mr. Holloway wrote that Blue Ocean, the companies to which he rented the yachts, and the final “customer” should not have the same shareholders, administrators or addresses recorded, to avoid any “common bond” which could arouse suspicion .
As the memo notes, Mr. Abramovich’s lawyer had agreed to put the property of Blue Ocean in a fully distinct trust – apparently the other companies.
Indeed, the ownership of the Yacht Blue Ocean management company was then transferred from the main trust of the Oligarch to a new one, the Neptune Trust.
‘Hide reality’
The way in which Mr. Abramovich’s societies praised the yachts, said Professor DI Tanno at the BBC, was an “artificial structure” which escaped taxes – a criminal offense.
“My conclusion is that in the case, there has been a tax evasion … because all parties know exactly what to do to hide reality,” he said.
FERIA RITA tax expert told the BBC that she had seen in the yacht program “indicates” that they could distort the information “.
“If this is the case, then we are now in the field of escape,” she added.
Mr. Holloway, who resigned as director of Blue Ocean about 15 years ago, he told BBC that he “joined Blue Ocean 20 years ago and that he was there for a relatively short period “.
He said he had “literally managed hundreds of ships of many different places around the world”. “I cannot expect me to remember the individual circumstances of each ship that I have ever succeeded,” he said.
Lawyers representing Mr. Abramovich told the BBC that he had denied “any allegation that he had knowledge” or was “personally responsible” or responsible for “any alleged deception of any government authority” to escape taxes.
His lawyers declared that, as was Mr. Abramovich had asked for professional legal and tax advice and had acted on this subject, he expects that “similar councils were requested at the times relevant by those who are responsible for the Daily race “of companies involved in the scheme.
If it was a real superyacht rental company, we could expect substantial benefits. However, Blue Ocean’s accounts show that from 2005 to 2012, his expenses almost corresponded to his income.
This meant that almost no tax on companies was due because the company’s benefits were tiny.
A note from the director Blue Ocean suggests that the fact of getting close to expenses and income has not been an accident and that the company would generate charters when the program was to cover the expenses.
“At the beginning of each week, we will have a meeting in Blue Ocean where we will examine our current banking sales and our cash needs for the 1 ~ 2 weeks (sic). If we see a need for a cash injection, we lift A charter and appropriate invoices, “he wrote.
Mr. Abramovich stayed aboard the PELORUS in Lisbon at the 2004 Euro football championships
There is also evidence in disclosed files that the charter agreements were rear. This includes a temporal charter agreement supposed to be signed in July 2005 by Blue Ocean and another Abramovich company in the BVI called Eyke Services. However, the files show that Eyke Services did not exist at that time – it was not incorporated until the month later.
In another case, a director of Blue Ocean asked for the production of a rear time charter and signed in order to obtain the delivery of duties franchise for the 86 m (282ft) of Mr. Abramovich’s Yacht – who could accommodate 15 guests in eight suites – saving the billionaire $ 44,000 (£ 35,000) in tax.
In the documents, the Deloitte tax consultants in Cyprus wrote to Mr. Holloway, the director of the Ocean Blue, saying that if the ships were pleasure ships, they should pay VAT. But if the ships were classified as commercial, they would not do it.
A leading Superyacht lawyer, Benjamin Maltby, told BBC that the type of contracts used for many luxury yacht charters from Mr. Abramovich was designed for commercial ships carrying dry cargoes such as grain or steel.
This gives us more evidence than the entire commercial “look” of the operation was an imposture.
‘The avocados rose on it’
Mr. Abramovich’s Superyacht program has twice a legal examination, with different levels of success, learned the BBC and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Richard Bridge captured two of Mr. Abramovich’s yachts for almost six years from 2006 to 2012, including the Pelorus, and the giant eclipse, the pride of the Abramovich fleet. A few years after having finished working for Mr. Abramovich, the captain was arrested and questioned at Amsterdam Schipol Airport.
Italian prosecutors had started procedures against three of the captains of Mr. Abramovich – including Mr. Bridge – for unpaid excise rights on refueling and tax evasion.
But Mr. Bridge told the BBC that he had contacted Blue Ocean and “their lawyers rose on it,” said him a few months later that the case had been abandoned.
The archives of the Italian court seen by the BBC procedure were interrupted after the lawyers “produced the documentation” proving that Pelorus has “entered the registers as a commercial boat because it is used for commercial purposes or for rental “.
Getty images
The eclipse has often been seen in recent years off the coast of Turkey
Bridge said he was not aware that Mr. Abramovich also controlled companies that charter yachts.
In Cyprus, tax officials investigated Blue Ocean separately by up to 17 million euros (14.3 million pounds sterling) on unpaid VAT, contesting the claim of the company to be “zero” for VAT because it It was a commercial operation.
Blue Ocean lawyers said the requests to provide evidence that ships had been used commercially by companies chartered them were “unreasonable and oppressive”, but they had still asked its customers and had received no response.
We now know that Blue Ocean’s customers were, of course, the other companies of Mr. Abramovich.
According to an appeal judgment in 2018, VAT investigators noted that Blue Ocean had presented no evidence that the companies charting the yachts were “engaged in economic activity” and that its affirmation according to which the boats were Used for commercial purposes have been rejected.
In the end, Cyprus continued the Blue Ocean for the figure of 14 million euros (11.8 million pounds sterling).
We do not know if the sum was paid – the company did not attend its own call in March 2024 and was dissolved four months later.
Cypus Confidential is an international collaborative survey launched in 2023 led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Cyprus companies that have provided business and financial services to the regime of the Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The media partners include The Guardian, the Investigative News Paper Trail Media, the Italian newspaper L’Espresso, the Crime Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).
