Deloitte, the world’s largest accountancy firm, helped falsify documents to conceal Roman Abramovich’s wealth and evade taxes, according to a BBC Panorama investigation conducted jointly with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Accounts signed off by Deloitte in Cyprus made assets worth $672 million—including superyachts, mansions, private jets, and helicopters—disappear from Abramovich’s company accounts. The investigation, based on thousands of leaked documents spanning 1995 to 2022, reveals how Deloitte Cyprus and a corporate services firm called MeritServus (which Deloitte owned until 2005 and later worked closely with) managed the oligarch’s offshore finances.
In one scheme uncovered by the investigation, after Cyprus implemented a transparency law in 2006 requiring public company accounts, Abramovich’s associates and MeritServus created a plan to transfer $672 million in assets from the Cypriot company Amiscan Investments to a parent company in the British Virgin Islands. Critically, they backdated this transfer by three years to make it appear it had occurred in 2003, before the transparency requirement took effect. Deloitte Cyprus reviewed the backdated documents and approved them as “adequate” for removing the assets from the accounts. When Deloitte signed off on the 2003 accounts in 2006, the property, planes, and yachts vanished, leaving only $75,000 in recorded assets.
A second scheme involved Kravin Investments, another Abramovich Cypriot company holding nearly $2 billion in 2003. An August 2005 email from MeritServus to Abramovich’s Russian associates stated that a plan “devised after a meeting with Deloitte” would “change the financial statements and accounting records accordingly for 2003 and 2004.” MeritServus created backdated documents falsely showing Kravin was merely holding funds on behalf of its BVI parent company, making it appear the company had no tax liability in Cyprus. A Deloitte email from September 2005 outlined changes needed to accounts due to these backdated alterations.
Barrister Andrew Mitchell KC, an expert in financial services law, characterized the scheme as “straightforward” tax evasion, stating “it couldn’t be more blatant.” Lord Sikka, a professor of accounting at the University of Sheffield, called the misrepresentation of transaction dates a “violation of a statutory duty” and “pretty scandalous.”
Abramovich’s lawyers denied he evaded tax or concealed his fortune, stating he did not authorize or direct any document falsification and that relying on professional advice was legitimate. Deloitte Cyprus said it “acts in compliance with applicable laws.” The leaked documents form part of the Cyprus Confidential investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Key facts
- Deloitte signed off on accounts that removed $672 million in assets from Abramovich’s company records through backdated documents
- A second scheme involved falsifying financial statements to help Abramovich’s Cypriot company avoid tax on nearly $2 billion in holdings
- Deloitte owned MeritServus until 2005 and continued to work closely with the firm afterward in managing Abramovich’s finances
- The leaked documents span 1995 to 2022 and were investigated jointly by BBC Panorama and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism