The Guardian investigation: where Roman Abramovich’s billion-dollar art collection is hidden

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian businessman Roman Abramovich took care of his art collection worth a billion dollars (as of 2018).

Taking advantage of leaked files from the Cypriot business registrar MeritServus, The Guardian and other publications conducted their own investigation. The MeritServus files contained a description of the collection and its ownership structure. As of 2018, the collection contained 369 objects of art with a total value of $962 million – this is the amount Roman Abramovich’s managers valued it at. Among them are dozens of masterpieces: Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, Claude Monet, Rene Magritte and others.

The acquisition of some of them was previously known. In 2008, for example, the purchase of Francis Bacon’s “Triptych” (this is the most expensive exhibit in the collection) cost the businessman $86.3 million.

But, as often happens with private collections, the fate of many paintings remained a mystery for many years. About Kazimir Malevich’s painting “Suprematist Composition” * (1919-1920) all that was known, for example, was that in 2000 the artist’s heirs put it up for auction, where it was sold for $17 million. The buyer’s name was not disclosed. From the MeritServus files it follows that already in 2013 the painting belonged to Abramovich.

The collection is owned by Seline-Invest, a company based in the Virgin Islands, which then moved to the island of Jersey. It is controlled by the Cyprus trust Ermis Trust Settlement, which was founded in 2010, when Roman Abramovich was the only beneficiary.

After the businessman’s divorce from Daria Zhukova in early 2021, the beneficial shares in the trust were divided in half between the former spouses. But on February 4, 2022, three weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, trust officials appointed by Abramovich made a decision that experts say was likely made to protect the collection from possible sanctions. Abramovich gave his ex-wife 1%, and the ratio of shares became 51% to 49%.

Journalists argue that in some countries this arrangement can significantly reduce the risk that the asset will be seized. A month after these changes were made, Roman Abramovich actually found himself under sanctions EU and Great Britain, and his assets, including the Chelsea football club, were frozen.

So far, the sanctions have not affected the expensive art collection. Journalists report that the Ukrainian authorities are now compiling a list of works of art belonging to oligarchs around Putin. It is unknown where the collection is currently located. Abramovich did not answer journalists’ questions, and Daria Zhukova refused to comment.

Russian businessman Roman Abramovich at the initial stage participated in organizing peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine – this was confirmed both in Moscow and Kiev, reminds edition. Later, the billionaire was involved in a prisoner exchange: he communicated with the director of the Russian FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, and the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andrei Ermak.

In October 2022, Ukraine imposed sanctions against Abramovich, with a delay pending the completion of the exchange of prisoners and bodies of those killed in the war.

At the beginning of 2023, it became known that three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Abramovich transferred billions of trusts to his children.

*Suprematism is a movement in avant-garde art founded in 1915 by Kazimir Malevich. A type of geometric abstractionism.

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