Boris Rotenberg and his brother Arkady Rotenberg are Russian billionaires and childhood friends of President Vladimir Putin. OCCRP recently revealed in its Rotenberg Files that Arkady Rotenberg purchased and financed a chalet in Kitzbühel, Austria, through Cypriot companies. OCCRP also revealed that Spanish authorities seized a luxury villa belonging to Boris and Karina Rotenberg in Oliva, Spain, in October 2022.
According to OCCRP, the leaked correspondence reveals a convoluted web of tactics lawyers and corporate service providers employed to obfuscate Rotenberg’s association with the villa. Despite their efforts, Spanish authorities seized the property last year.
The leak, consisting of over 50,000 emails and documents, provides unprecedented insights into the strategies employed by associates of Boris and his brother Arkady to safeguard the oligarchs’ assets and businesses. Dubbed the Rotenberg Files, these revelations shed light on how a Russian businessman named Maxim Viktorov assisted the blacklisted billionaires in circumventing financial, legal, and reputational challenges arising from sanctions. The emails indicate that the Spanish villa held immense value to Boris and his wife.
For years, Boris and Karina Rotenberg’s ostentatious coat of arms presided over an imposing mansion in Oliva, Spain, on the sun-drenched Mediterranean coast. However, the coat of arms has vanished as the property was discreetly frozen in October 2022.
Payments to a contractor for the Villa had been coming from Boris Rotenberg’s Cypriot company, Logotax Developments Limited. According to the leak, Logotax had made four payments totaling €4 million. The Cyprus-based company is controlled by Velidom Ltd, a Cyprus-based entity connected to the Austrian Chalet of Arkady Rotenberg.
Read the full OCCRP report here.
The leaded emails uncover that a succession of lawyers and service providers worked for years to alter the villa’s ownership structure, revise its financial records, and fabricate backdated documentation in an apparent endeavor to shield it from scrutiny.
While these tactics proved effective for nearly a decade, they ultimately failed to prevent the property from being frozen. Viktorov asserted that neither he nor his companies had violated any laws, particularly the U.S. and EU sanctions legislation, dismissing the journalists’ findings as “erroneous.”
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