Russian oligarch owned Italian resort for months after sanctions were imposed – FT

Russian oligarch Musa Bazhaev still owned a luxury Sardinian resort more than two months after the EU imposed sanctions on him.

Source: Financial Times

Details: The disclosure was made in the annual statutory document filed in Cyprus by Retivia Investments, which owns the famous Forte Village hotel, as well as other assets in Sardinia worth more than €700 million.

The statement asks why the Italian authorities did not take steps to freeze the assets within weeks of 8 April 2022, when Bazhaev was added to the EU sanctions list. In late April, the French authorities seized the oligarch's villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

It has been known that Bazhaev owned Forte Village since at least 2014.

The June statement also contradicts another publicly available document filed with the Cyprus company registry a month later, on 26 July 2022, which states that Retivia Investments was sold to a relative of Bazhaev on 25 February 2022, the day after the full-scale Russian invasion.

According to company documents, in early 2023, Retivia Investments and its assets, including Forte Village, were transferred to Kazakh businessman Shukhrat Ibragimov. Ibragimov is the CEO of Luxembourg-based Eurasian Resources Group, one of the world's largest cobalt and copper producers.

Bazhaev, who was born in Chechnya, is one of Russia's richest men, with interests spanning the oil, metals and commodities industries. Bazhaev, 58, is the president of Alliance Group, which "supports a number of significant companies in the Russian gas, oil, and telecommunications sectors", the EU says.

He is also the head of Russian Platinum, which Brussels says is a "substantial source of revenue to the Government of the Russian Federation". Bazhaev remains on the EU and UK sanctions lists.

The current owner of Retivia, Ibragimov, was a co-investor with Bazhaev in Dzherui, Kyrgyzstan's second-largest gold mine.

Background: The Russian oligarch transferred ownership of his Italian luxury resort the day after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which preceded the introduction of Western sanctions.

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