Billions undercover: How Deripaska circumvents sanctions and builds up the Adriatic
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is under sanctions, still secretly owns real estate assets in Montenegro.
Despite the EU and US sanctions imposed on billionaire Oleg Deripaska since 2022 and statements of commitment from the Montenegrin authorities, the Russian oligarch continues to be a secret investor in real estate in the republic, Radio Liberty reported.
Montenegro’s Ministry of Planning and Urbanization earlier this year granted K.P.M. a permit to build a five-star hotel in the Trsteno Beach area near Budva. According to the approved project, the tourist complex will be located above Trsteno beach (Kotor municipality). It will include the main building of the hotel of the category “five stars”, 819 parking spaces are provided. In the conclusion of the Acting Chief State Architect Mirjana Djurisic it is emphasized that the project will ensure “exclusivity of the seaside tourist complex”.
Since its foundation in February 2004 and until May 2020, K.P.M. was owned by two offshore structures – Tangril Equities from the British Virgin Islands and Gavroche Investment from Cyprus. Both companies, as Radio Liberty found, are linked to Deripaska and were mentioned as belonging to him in the materials of the US and UK courts.
Jolie Services, registered in the Marshall Islands, recently became the owner of K.P.M.. The same firm manages Overseas Assets Management, which owns a neighboring plot of land where a €50 million luxury villa complex was built. Both companies control about 550,000 square meters of land on Cape Platamuni. Deripaska purchased plots of land on the elite coast between Budva and Kotor back in the early 2000s for only €9 per square meter. It is also likely that Deripaska remains one of the co-owners of the elite yacht complex Porto Montenegro in Tivat. Deripaska was invited into the project to turn the military base into a marina by American investors, including his friend Nathaniel Rothschild.
