Roman Abramovich gave his children millions before the sanctions

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich secretly transferred hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets – including superyachts and one of the world’s largest private jets – to his children just days before he was placed under international sanctions, an FBI analyst has found.

Court documents filed last week in a US government attempt to seize the billionaire’s expensive private planes revealed the devious ways he used to protect his vast fortune, the Sunday Times of London revealed.

In an affidavit filed with the Southern District of New York on Monday, FBI Special Agent Alan Fowler wrote that Abramovich, a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin, used a series of shell companies to purchase the two planes — a custom Gulfstream G650ERa valued at approximately $60 million and a $350 million customized Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most expensive private jets in the world.

In February 2022 — just days before Putin’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine triggered punitive sanctions against the Russian president’s oligarch cronies — Abramovich made some or all of his seven children beneficiaries of the Cyprus-based Europa Settlement Trust, the document said.

The Europa Trust controls the shell companies, which on paper own Abramovich’s jets, several yachts, a helicopter and other assets, Fowler found.

Abramovich, who made his fortune in Russian energy companies in the early years of Putin’s “KGB capitalism” and rose to fame as the flashy owner of London’s Chelsea Football Club, has four daughters and three sons aged between 8 and 30 – all of whom have dual citizenship own in Russia and either the UK or the US.