Asset worth over 70 million euros: French authorities confiscate luxury villas belonging to Russian oligarchs

Asset worth over 70 million euros
French authorities confiscate luxury villas belonging to Russian oligarchs

October 15, 2024, 11:11 a.m

As part of a money laundering investigation in the south of France, French authorities have seized, among other things, several villas that are said to belong to two Russian oligarchs. The investigation was initiated in March, at the end of which the courts allowed, among other things, the seizure of a property in Grasse and luxury villas in Saint-Raphaël and Grimaud, according to judicial circles.

The confiscated assets amounting to more than 70 million euros will be allocated to the two oligarchs Ruslan Goryukhin and Mikhail Opengejm. The two men are said to have Cypriot passports. Both are active in the energy sector.

Goryukhin is said to have worked for billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Opengejm’s name also appears in the so-called Pandora Papers, which in 2021 will reveal the tax avoidance tricks of prominent multimillionaires in many places.

France has frozen billions of dollars in suspected Russian assets since Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine began in February 2022. Among other things, luxury yachts, chalets and the like were confiscated.