The most famous.

Russian.

Oligarch in the West.

Someone we've read a lot about over the past.

Few years. Oil tie crew and.

Politician Roman Abramovich.

Britain's most famous Russian. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

A fixture in headlines for two decades thanks to his purchases of football clubs, yachts, art, property. But it all came crashing down for Roman Abramovich in February 2022. It was.

Unprovoked, but this is.

What.

Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Unleashed on Ukraine.

Abramovich has links to Putin who is mounting a barbaric and evil attack against the people of Ukraine.

Abramovich was sanctioned in March 2022 by the UK government and the EU Council. His assets frozen, banned from traveling. The justification? That he had supported and profited from Putin's regime. But Abramovich has said that it's unfair that he had no significant financial connection to Putin. So was this a case of rough justice? Was the oligarch wronged? To find out, we've been on a journey from London to Cyprus, speaking to politicians.

It's almost like peeling back laser and onion.

Financial experts.

I find it hard to believe that this is an innocent transaction.

Former Kremlin insiders.

When he came into government offices like everybody.

Stood up. And anti-corruption campaigners.

Cyprus cannot be used by oligarchs to support the dirty wars of Putin.

The journey started with some leaked documents from the International Consortium of investigative journalists, Cyprus Confidential Project.

Allegations of a financial as well as a political connection between Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Putin have swirled for years, but Newsnight and the Bureau of investigative journalism have uncovered a paper trail of evidence which apparently shows it. It's new material which justifies those UK and EU sanctions and raises the question of whether the United States should follow.

So what is this financial connection between Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Putin that Newsnight, BBC Verify, and the Bureau of investigative journalism have uncovered? Roman Abramovich was the beneficiary of a trust which ultimately owned two Cypriot-registered Shell companies called Finoto and Grassora through a series of other Shell companies. In 2003, these two companies each acquired a 12.5% stake in Russia's monopoly TV advertising company Video International for a mysteriously low price of just $130,000 each. By 2010, the entities had made $30 million in dividends from Video International. But in late 2010, Finoto sold its lucrative stake in Video International to another Cypriot Shell company called Medmedia Network, and Grassora sold its stake in the advertising company to yet another Cypriot Shell company called Namiral Trading. Despite Video International reporting revenues of $3 billion in that year, these stakes were sold for just $20 million each, a price that appears to be below a reasonable assessment of their fair value. The nominal beneficial owner of Medmedia Network was a man called Serge Roldugin, and the nominal beneficial owner of Namiral was Alexander Plekov.

Roldugin is a Russian cellist and.

Conductor, but he's known Putin since childhood and his.

Godfather to his daughter.

And he's been described.

As Putin's wallet by the Swiss government.

Plekov has been identified by the UK government as another close friend of Putin. What this paper trail suggests is that Abramovitch effectively transferred a 25% stake in a Russian company with multibillion dollar revenues to individuals close to Putin for a price that appears to be below fair market value.

Abramovitch was well-connected in top power circles when he came into government offices like everybody stood up.

Vladimir Milov is a former Deputy Energy Minister of Russia under Putin in the early 2000s, now turned opponent in exile.

I can see that brick by brick, international investigative community is building a pretty solid tower of evidence connecting Abramovych to Putin. I think this desire to hide it was intentional because Putin needed such people at the international stage who nominally have no connection with him on surface but are also very loyal and might be used in projecting his interests abroad. In this regard, they both undertook very significant measures to hide their connection, and it's very good that the investigative community keeps exposing it.

We showed our findings to Tom Keating, a veteran finance and security analyst. They might argue that this is simply.

An innocent transaction.

Between two parties.

How credible is that, do you think?

I find it hard to believe that this is an innocent transaction between two parties, firstly, because the individuals involved have a track record of facilitating this transaction. And secondly, this is a mechanism that we've seen on a number of occasions before to transfer value between individuals connected with the Kremlin and the Kremlin. So on the face of it, this would seem to be far from innocent.

Their friendship is something that's been long understood, but that confirmation is really important because it's almost like peeling back layers of an onion. People don't want to get to the heart of the truth of this, but the reporting that you found gives us the clearest indicator we have yet that everything the government has done is absolutely legally sound that there is a link. How do.

You establish a link? You follow the money. And the road led us to a sunny Mediterranean island with a reputation for hiding fortunes in dark corners.

So how did we get this vital information, this confirmation of an apparent financial connection between Roman and Bramovich and Vladimir and Vladimir Putin. It's because of a leak of documents from a firm here in Cyprus called Merit Service, which had been looking after Roman and Bramovich's global financial fortune. Why Cyprus? Well, because for the past two decades, Cyprus or Moscow on the med, as it's sometimes known, had played a key role in taking Russian money, distributing it around the globe in a way that couldn't be linked back to its ultimate owners. Troublingly, an EU member states legal and accounting services had helped to conceal a link between the most famous Russian oligarch in the West and the Russian President. I think.

What we can see here for the first time is a much larger picture of the scale of the operation, the scale of the entanglement of Cyprus with Russia, the importance of Cyprus as a member of Europe and part of the Eurozone, and how vital it is to Russian interests. What we are actually seeing is an operation within Europe, a sophisticated clandestine operation at odds, completely at odds with Western interests.

But the sanctions imposed on Russian by Europe and the US and by the UK government directly on merit service means the island has now finally been forced to change its ways, says one anti-corruption campaigner and MP.

The sanctions brought whole that Cyprus cannot be used by oligarchs to support the dirty wars of Putin. I believe that Cyprus got the message. I believe that professionals in Cyprus, banks and the financial sector got the message that this is the end. Whatever happened, happened. We have to clean our act. We have to put an end to people coming to Cyprus because we had a very relaxed system. Now the system, on the contrary, is very, very strict. I believe that Cyprus is going to gain again its place in the financial industry of the European Union.

Though some analysts say the jury is still out on Cyprus's compliance, and there is also.

Other unfinished business. Abramovich has.

Still not been sanctioned by the US government, reportedly because the Ukrainian President, Vladimir Zelensky, requested it in light of Abramovich's role in peace talks in the wake of the invasion. Negotiating behind the scenes, the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

Today, the Kremlin- There was some hope associated with him in the early months of Putin's aggression against Ukraine that he might be useful as some form of intermediary in some negotiations and so on. But I think nearly two years down the road as the war rages on, we can see that it's largely a false hope. It's pretty useless, and he should be sanctioned. He's one of the major enablers of the Putin system who still evades US sanctions, and I think that should be corrected.

And are there lessons from this story for the UK and the network of industries that has arisen to profit from foreign money of questionable provenance?

We still haven't done enough to rid ourselves of these ill-gotten rubles and other currencies from around the world. We've taken action against the banks, but it's the enablers. We need to deal with these state agents, the accountants, the lawyers, all these people who've created for themselves an industry around these high net worth individuals who stole their money from the Russian people, who stole their money from people around the world who, imagine what could have been achieved had that money been invested in the futures of those countries instead.

Despite attempts to contact Mr. Abramovich, Mr.oldugin, and Mr. Roldugin, and Mr. Plekov for a comment, we did not get a response. The true relationship between the oligarch and the President comes into focus and raises uncomfortable questions about how it was facilitated and concealed for so long.

And who.

It profited.