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Under EU sanctions:
The oligarch
Mikhail Fridman
controls the investment company LetterOne through Luxembourg companies
Photo: POOL / REUTERS
Cyprus is a small speck on the map and, with 9251 square kilometers, occupies just 0.05 percent of the area of Russia, the largest country in the world.
Nevertheless, the Mediterranean island is of enormous importance for Russian oligarchs.
For years, the EU country and tax haven Cyprus housed a large part of Russia's wealth.
At least that was the case before Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
In the past few weeks, some of the largest assets of the richest Russians have been withdrawn from Cyprus: on the one hand, EU sanctions made oligarchs fear for their money, on the other hand
Vladimir Putin
(69) also demanded
his compatriots to bring the money home.
Even before the war, Putin had had assets of almost $25 billion attributed to the Kremlin boss withdrawn from the island through middlemen.
According to a report by the financial news agency Bloomberg, other billionaires are now following suit:
Victor Rashnikov
(73), for example, transferred a $4 billion stake in one of Russia's largest steelmakers from a shell company in Cyprus back to his home country in March, Bloomberg reports.
Steel magnate
Alexei Mordashov
, 56, on February 28 moved part of his $1.5 billion stake in tour operator Tui from a Cypriot company to a
British Virgin Islands
company .
Again, the chairman of the Russian gas company Novatek,
Leonid Mikhelson
(66), had a 14 percent stake in the company transferred to him personally from a Cypriot holding company - Bloomberg puts the value of the stake at around $4.8 billion.
Mikhelson, however, is not one of the sanctioned oligarchs.
About 20 Russians are among the 500 richest people in the world.
Worth a total of $261 billion, more than half of them have temporarily placed their main assets in Cypriot holding companies, according to files obtained by Bloomberg.
Russia has been intertwined with the island's economy for decades.
Thanks to low taxes, Cyprus has become a haven - but since EU sanctions came into force, Cyprus is no longer a safe haven for Russian money.
Dubai, Hong Kong, Mauritius - Russian billionaires are shifting
As Russia becomes more constrained in the global financial system, billionaires now have far fewer opportunities to invest their money there.
Repatriating assets to a country heading for economic ruin is also risky.
However, in the US, UK or EU countries such as Cyprus, assets are at risk of being frozen, blocked or possibly confiscated.
The war in Ukraine has already drawn more Russian money into
Dubai
, whose government is pushing for a "peaceful" resolution to the conflict.
Hong Kong
is another possibility, especially since China's head of state
Xi Jinping
(68) is still holding back on the Ukraine conflict.
Mauritius is also on the oligarchs' flight list.
A handful of the billionaires also own assets in the British Virgin Islands or the Caribbean, according to Bloomberg.
At least three others use vehicles in Europe.
Mikhail Fridman, 57, Petr Aven
, 67, and
German Khan
, 60 - all under EU and UK sanctions - control, through Luxembourg companies, investment firm LetterOne, which has interests in energy, retail and telecoms.
Offshore companies are covering up Russian tracks
Even if opportunities to hide money diminish, the amount channeled into offshore centers by Russians could skyrocket, says
Paivi Karhunen to Bloomberg, a professor at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland.
The country's economy is not just in freefall.
An offshore company also allows an investor from Russia to effectively cover the traces of the origin of the money.
According to Bloomberg, Russian money could also end up in the United States - despite the sanctions.
Holding structures obscure identity or nationality and allow owners to circumvent beneficial ownership sanction rules, Karhunen said.
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