Russian oligarch Alexei Kuzmichev held by French police

Police in France detained Russian billionaire Alexei Kuzmichev and carried out a dramatic raid involving 60 officers on two of the oligarch’s properties on Monday as they investigate allegations of tax avoidance, money laundering and violating sanctions.

Kuzmichev, a co-founder of the Alfa Group conglomerate in Russia and UK-based LetterOne, is being questioned by police and remained in custody on Monday night, according to a French judicial source.

Searches were carried out at his home in Paris and an estate in the Var region of southern France, the person added.

The preliminary investigation relates to allegations of violations of international sanctions, tax avoidance and money laundering, although no charges have been filed to date.

Financial prosecutors in France have three inquiries under way against Russian oligarchs, while another prosecutor in Paris is investigating others, including billionaire Nikolai Sarkisov.

Kuzmichev, who could not be reached for comment, is one of the few Russian oligarchs to be detained in the west since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine last year.

The EU imposed sanctions on Kuzmichev alongside his partners Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan in March 2022 for “actively supporting materially or financially and benefiting from Russian decision makers responsible for the annexation of Crimea or the destabilisation of Ukraine”.

It said Kuzmichev was also “one of the leading Russian business persons involved in economic sectors providing a substantial source of revenue” to the Kremlin and claimed he was “one of the most influential persons in Russia [with] well-established ties to the Russian president”.

The UK’s National Crime Agency arrested Fridman last year in a dramatic raid with 50 officers on Athlone House, his £65mn mansion in Highgate in north London, but quickly scaled back the investigation and dropped the final remaining charge against the oligarch in September.

Kuzmichev was in Switzerland on a skiing holiday when the war broke out, then moved to France, where he has lived with his wife and three children most of the time since the early 2000s, according to people close to him.

Kuzmichev, who has a Cypriot passport, is one of the few sanctions-hit Russian oligarchs to have remained in Europe during the war, along with Aven, who lives in Latvia.

France previously targeted two yachts he owns on the French Riviera as part of an asset freeze last year. Judges later ruled that French customs authorities had “clearly misused” their authority in raiding the yachts. Kuzmichev’s court victories, however, were largely symbolic as he is still unable to move the yachts under the asset freeze.

Kuzmichev first met his fellow Alfa partners in the 1980s while studying at the Institute of Steel and Alloys in Moscow during perestroika.

The group largely moved to the west after selling their stake in oil company TNK-BP to state-owned Rosneft in 2013 and invested the proceeds in European companies through LetterOne.

Since the early 2000s, however, Kuzmichev had stepped back from Alfa’s businesses to a great extent, according to people familiar with the matter, leaving management of their empire to Fridman, Khan and Aven.

Unlike Khan, who returned to Russia last year, and Fridman, who went back to Moscow earlier this month, Kuzmichev and Aven have not visited the country since the invasion, the people said.

Following EU and UK sanctions against the four oligarchs, Kuzmichev and Khan sold their stakes in LetterOne and Alfa-Bank last year to Andrei Kosogov, another Alfa-Bank shareholder who is not under sanctions.

Kuzmichev’s arrest was first reported by Le Monde newspaper.