Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russian money streams through Cyprus

Financial Times

A new parking scheme appeared late last year in some congested Moscow neighbourhoods. Street signs advised Muscovites either to buy a ticket at a nearby machine or text their licence plate details to a number: 7757.

Evgeny Schultz, a Moscow blogger, took a closer look. It turned out that the number 7757 had been bought by a company registered just six months previously, which itself had been founded by two Cyprus-registered companies whose ownership was unclear.

One of the names on the registration documents was the same as that of a senior adviser to the city’s department of transport and communications, which oversees the parking programme.

“This could just be a massive coincidence, of course,” Mr Schulz said, with an unmistakable note of sarcasm.

The city has defended the scheme, saying “every kopek” goes into its budget. But the episode underlines the unique, pervasive and dubious role that Cyprus plays in Russia’s economy.

In June, Cyprus became the fifth country in the eurozone to request an international bailout after lenders got caught up in the debt restructuring of Greece’s banks. Seven months later, the island is still waiting for funding amid EU fears that the island is a haven for Russian dirty money. Such fears are particularly strong in Germany and will need to be assuaged if Berlin is to back a bailout.
Estimates of the size of Russia’s deposits in Cyprus range from €8bn, according to some experts, to up to €35bn, according to a German intelligence report cited in Der Spiegel magazine.

In 2011, Cyprus was the number-one destination for Russian money being sent abroad and the number-one direct investor in Russia, with more than $13bn in investments, according to Russia’s Central Bank.
“From an economic perspective, Russia and Cyprus are so intertwined, Cyprus could almost be another region of the Russian Federation,” said Steven Dashevsky, founder of Dashevsky & Partners, a Moscow investment company.