Per a Law&Crime report: “A U.S. judge signed a warrant authorizing the seizure of two luxury airplanes worth more than $400 million and traced by authorities to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, court filings indicate.” The seizures seemingly hadn’t actually taken place as of Monday afternoon, but the developments represented another high-stakes front of the global campaign to hold Putin and his allies financially accountable for targeting Ukraine.
It’s alleged violations of export-related rules that are apparently behind the new U.S. actions targeting these Abramovich-tied planes. Law&Crime identified the targeted planes as a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner and a Gulfstream G650ER. Shell companies are apparently involved in the actual ownership arrangements behind these high-dollar aircraft: the Gulfstream is apparently owned by a company called Clear Skies Flights Limited, whose representatives were “affiliated with one of Abramovich’s investment vehicles, MHC Services (Limited), with an address associated with the Chelsea Football Club, the professional English soccer team that Abramovich then owned,” per an FBI affidavit covering the time of the plane’s apparent sale to Abramovich.
Clear Skies itself is apparently “a wholly owned subsidiary of Wotton Overseas Holdings Limited (‘Wotton’),” which owns other Abramovich assets, per federal information. The Boeing plane, meanwhile, is apparently owned by a British Virgin Islands-based company called Wenham Overseas Limited, which Abramovich is apparently understood to own. “Flight records for the Boeing reflect that, after the Russia sanctions went into effect on or about February 24 and March 2, 2022, the Boeing was reexported to Russia,” a Justice Department filing says. That re-exportation was a flight from Dubai to Moscow, while two March flights into Russia of the Gulfstream plane were singled out. It sounds like the U.S. origin of the planes provided U.S. officials with the ability to exert control over their usage. A document from the Commerce Department related to the matter specified both of the aircraft as “U.S.-origin.”
Indeed: “As a result, any U.S.-origin aircraft or foreign aircraft that includes more than 25% controlled U.S.-origin content, and that is registered in, owned, or controlled by, or under charter or lease by Russia or a national of Russia, is subject to a license requirement before it can be exported or reexported to Russia,” according to that Commerce document. Those details are what make Abramovich’s shell companies tied to the aircraft particularly relevant — it’s Russian-owned airplanes that are under scrutiny in this context. The exporting of such planes to Russia requires apparent special licensing. “Roman Abramovich was a primary passenger on part, if not all, of those flights to and from Russia,” the Commerce Department notes of a series of flights of the Gulfstream plane including two trips into Russia. The second flight into Russia was preceded by flights to Tel Aviv and then Istanbul.
A variety of consequences were set to potentially befall Abramovich after that document from the Commerce Department was issued. Abramovich has been tied to other substantial financial actions undertaken in relation to the war in Ukraine. In April, the U.K. government undertook what was reportedly its largest asset freeze ever, affecting Russian oligarchs’ assets worth up to $13 billion. The targeted oligarchs were associates of Roman Abramovich and include Eugene Tenenbaum and David Davidovich. The move, U.K. authorities said, “will prevent these assets from being repatriated to Russia and used to fund Putin’s war machine.”
