More than a year after his father was placed on the EU sanctions list, Roman Abramovich‘s son was granted a new Lithuanian passport in October 2023, according to a January 5 report from the Siena Center for Investigative Journalism in Vilnius.
The Lithuanian Interior Ministry announced on Dec. 7. that it was investigating the circumstances around how Abramovich’s children, Arkady and Anna, obtained Lithuanian citizenship after the Siena Center published an investigation on the issue.
After analyzing data from documents that were leaked and dubbed “Cyprus Confidential,” the Siena Center found that Abramovich had named the two children as beneficiaries in one of his funds, potentially helping him get around sanctions from the US, UK, and EU.
Plans to amend the law to enable the government to strip dual nationals who are judged to be a threat to national security or who publicly support a state that poses a threat to Lithuania, EU member states, and allies of their Lithuanian citizenship are being announced by Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite.
Anna Abramovich obtained a Lithuanian passport in October 2011 and renewed it in May 2021, according to a report published by the Siena Center on January 5.
Since the grandparents of Roman Abramovich were from Lithuania, his children were entitled, under the legislation in effect at the time, to apply for Lithuanian citizenship.
Additionally, he was free to apply for a Lithuanian passport on his own, but he chose not to do so, the Migration Department of Lithuania informed journalists at the Siena Center. Abramovich is a citizen of Portugal, Israel, and Russia.
The Siena Center claims that his son Arkady obtained a passport in 2013 after his Lithuanian citizenship was “restored” to him per the directive of Dailis Alfonsas Barakauskas, the interior minister at the time.
In October 2023, after 20 months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions against his father and other Russian oligarchs, Arkady Abramovich was then granted a new passport from Lithuania.
Roman Abramovich challenged the EU’s decision to impose sanctions on him in a Brussels court, claiming that his business interests had nothing to do with the war and that he had no control over the decisions made by the Kremlin. Dec. 20: He lost the appeal.
It is estimated that Abramovich is worth $9 billion. Before the full-scale invasion, he held the position of governor of the Chukotka region in far-east Russia and was the owner of the Chelsea football club in the United Kingdom, which he was forced to sell.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Lithuania has been a steadfast ally and one of the country’s top donors in terms of GDP shares.
