Deloitte Cyprus Signed Off Accounts That Made $672m of Abramovich’s Assets Disappear

Superyachts, mansions and private jets vanished from a company's books between one audit and the next, and Deloitte Cyprus signed off the result. Backdated 2003 accounts, finalised in 2006, made $672m (£508m) of Roman Abramovich's assets disappear from the ledgers of his company Amiscan Investments, BBC Panorama and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported on 11 October 2026.

The finding shows that a signed, audited set of accounts from a Big Four firm offered no protection against concealment. By contrast, a compliant life insurance wrapper is taxed once, on a chargeable event gain, taxed once, when the policy is encashed - a transparent regime unlike the backdated corporate layering described in the files.

A barrister told the BBC the conduct would likely have drawn a UK prosecution had it occurred in England.

"If it happened in England and it was in the millions, His Majesty's Revenue and Customs would be thinking about a prosecution."

MeritServus also falsified records for two further Abramovich companies. The Cyprus-based administrator at the centre of the leaked files drew up a series of backdated documents in 2005 and 2006 that falsely showed Kravin Investments, holding close to $2bn, as merely investing funds on behalf of its parent company in the British Virgin Islands rather than owning them outright, a distinction that mattered for Cypriot tax purposes. With Electus Investments, whose fortune exceeded $10bn, MeritServus went further still, signing and backdating documents purporting to show that a BVI entity of the same name had owned the money since 20 November 2003, shifting the apparent tax residence of the assets years after the fact.

MeritServus, the Cyprus-based administrator at the centre of the leaked files, was previously owned by Deloitte before the two firms split in 2005. Deloitte Cyprus told the BBC it "acts in compliance with applicable laws."

Christos Christofides, a Cypriot MP, said the island's authorities now face a question of recovery and accountability.

"We have to see how we can get our money back and how, if some people are guilty, they have to pay the price according to our law."

Separately, a Jersey investigation into Abramovich's assets is also under way: £5.4bn remains frozen there, and the criminal inquiry has been running for four years. Nothing in the material published so far indicates whether HMRC has opened or plans any enforcement action tied to the Cyprus findings, or whether any of the Cypriot or BVI entities named ever fed assets into a UK-held life insurance wrapper.

Updated on 14 October 2026: this article was revised and re-checked against its sources.

Sources

Documents falsified to evade tax on Abramovich's wealth, BBC finds (BBC News, 11 Oct 2026)