Among the assets under suspicion are real estate located on the coast of the French Basque Country
Five months after the start of the war in Ukraine, the French Justice is investigating real estate acquired by Russian oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin in France.
The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF, for its acronym in French) opened an investigation on July 1, after the French branch of the NGO Transparency International filed a complaint at the end of May.
The PNF has opened the investigation for a possible crime of “money laundering in an organized gang of corruption crimes, embezzlement of public funds and aggravated tax fraud,” the Prosecutor’s Office has specified. The investigation has been entrusted to the Central Office for the Repression of Major Financial Crime (OCRGDF, for its acronym in French).
According to the newspaper ‘Le Parisien’, the conditions under which Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin acquired real estate between 2003 and 2018 on the Côte d’Azur, the French Basque coast, Paris and in ski resorts in the Alps are being investigated.
Transparency International France filed a complaint at the end of May with the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office against unknown persons for money laundering, non-justification of resources, cover-up and complicity, in order to denounce “the system of capture of the Russian State and national wealth by businessmen and high officials close to Vladimir Putin». According to this NGO, this system has ramifications in France, especially in the real estate sector.
EU sanctions
The European Union (EU) has imposed several packages of sanctions against Russia, since the recognition on February 21 by Moscow of the areas not controlled by the Government of the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk and the unprovoked and unjustified invasion from Ukraine. These sanctions include individual sanctions, economic sanctions and diplomatic measures.
The individual sanctions consist of a travel ban and the freezing of assets and bank accounts in the EU of the Russians who appear on the list. The sanctions that the European Union adopted against Russia for the war in Ukraine have allowed it to freeze some 13.8 billion euros so far from oligarchs and entities.
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