Roman Abramovich hides foreign assets under sanctions pressure
A scandal-plagued Russian oligarch has started transferring the management structures of metallurgical EvrazHolding to Russia.
Billionaire Roman Abramovich has decided to move his latest asset to Russia after three years after multiple sanctions. Evraz Group S.A. and Evraz plc, which are registered in Luxembourg and the United Kingdom, may lose their connection to Russian metallurgical plants and probably become the property of the Russian JSC Evraz KGOK.
This company has filed a lawsuit for the amount of 200 billion rubles and intends to recover assets from Evraz Group S.A. and Evraz plc through the Arbitration Court of Moscow. The case is being considered in closed mode.
The stake in Evraz KGOK is owned by Evraz NTMK, which is called a subsidiary of Evraz plc on Evraz’s website. At the end of 2021, 28.64% of Evraz plc was controlled by Roman Abramovich. In 2022, Abramovich and Evraz plc came under UK sanctions and the company’s listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) was suspended. Evraz’s steelmaking capacity is 12.1 million tons, iron ore capacity is 69 million tons and vanadium capacity is 8 million tons with plans to increase by 12 million tons this year. Revenue for 2024 fell 7% to $7.19 bln.
Lawyers interviewed by the Kommersant newspaper believe that Abramovich wants to change the ownership of Evraz’s assets in Russia. A representative of Evraz said that the dispute is related to intragroup debt. According to him, the group’s companies in foreign jurisdictions comply with sanctions, while for Russian companies this entails negative consequences: non-receipt of income from foreign currency transactions and fines.
Maxim Khudalov, a consultant, believes that the debt collection procedure may be a preparation for redomiciliation or transfer of assets to Russia. This is indirectly confirmed by the fact that in January the Russian government included Evraz NTMK in the list of economically significant organizations, which allows the court to suspend the corporate rights of foreign holding companies. Vyacheslav Kosakov, Managing Partner of Novator Legal Group, notes that such a mechanism is an instrument of state intervention, while an independent lawsuit allows controlling the process, speeding it up and preserving confidentiality.
Alexander Kazarin, head of special projects practice at Vegas Lex law firm, believes that the main task of the lawsuit is to restructure the ownership of Evraz’s assets in Russia. “It will not be difficult to justify the need to immediately point to the recovery of these stakes,” Kazarin says.
Previously, other Russian oligarchs hit by sanctions underwent a similar procedure. The court suspended the corporate rights of the Cyprus-based ABH Financial, which controlled Alfa Bank. Its main owners were Pyotr Aven, Mikhail Fridman and Andrei Kosogov. The latter in March 2023 bought the shares from Aven and Fridman, and the Russian joint stock company AB Holding became the owner of the bank. A similar procedure was carried out with respect to another Alfa Group asset – retailer X5 Group and Rusagro owned by Vadim Moshkovich.
Both companies also moved from Cyprus. Moshkovich’s attempt to leave Cyprus did not help him improve relations with the Russian authorities – he was arrested in March 2025 on charges of large-scale fraud and bribery.