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Arkady Abramovich, the son of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, received Lithuanian citizenship back in 2013, while his daughter Anna became a Lithuanian national in 2011, according to a report by the Siena Investigative Journalism Center. Arkady had his passport renewed in the fall of 2023, when his father had already been subject to international sanctions for 1.5 years.
Journalists from Siena and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) previously reported on Abramovich's children holding Lithuanian passports, but they initially wrote that Arkady Abramovich received a Lithuanian passport on 22 February 2022 — two days before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. It was not previously known when Anna Abramovich received her passport.
President Gitanas Nauseda has ordered an investigation into how Abramovich's children became Lithuanian citizens.
Speaking to Bloomberg, a spokeswoman for the billionaire said Arkady and Anna received Lithuanian citizenship by descent, as Abramovich's paternal grandparents came from Lithuania:
“Mr. Abramovich’s children, as well as all other descendants of Lithuanian Jews who were persecuted, have the absolute legal right to their citizenship. The fact that the Government of Lithuania failed to mention this context is misleading and shameful.”
In early 2023, a report by The Guardian confirmed that Roman Abramovich had redistributed most of his wealth to his children before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The leaked documents raised questions about whether changes to trusts holding billions of dollars of assets were made in an attempt to shield the oligarch’s vast fortune from sanctions and freezes.