Russian money is very welcome in Dubai. That was the case long before the war in Ukraine. Several media are now evaluating a data set on the local real estate market.
Dubai appears to be at the top of the investment list for wealthy Russian citizens. According to media reports, numerous wealthy Russians have been investing heavily in real estate in the emirate for some time – and possibly in this way saved their money from sanctions. In its Tuesday edition, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported, together with 20 international research partners, on a new data set that provides an insight into the ownership situation on the Dubai real estate market.
The research partners, coordinated by the Norwegian financial newspaper “E24”, gave the revelations the title “Dubai uncovered”. The data, an image of the Dubai land register as of early 2020, was sent to the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) in Washington. This is an organization that investigates international crime and conflicts.
In total, more than 5,000 Russian citizens own more than 9,700 properties in Dubai in the data, which was collected more than a year before the Russian attack on Ukraine. So far, Dubai has not joined the international sanctions against wealthy Russians. The research does not show how Russian investments have developed since Russia launched a war of aggression in Dubai.
Rich Russians are buying luxury properties in Dubai
According to the journalists, they were able to identify around a hundred members of Russia’s political elite, officials and Russian businessmen who own luxury apartments and villas in Dubai. Many of them are therefore close to the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to the report, one of them is Ruslan Baisarov, a confidante of Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov is providing military support to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Baisarow, who is not yet on any international sanctions list, owns five apartments and a beach villa on the artificial island of Palm Jumeirah. The report also names Roman Lyabikhov, a member of the Russian Communist Party, who has been sanctioned by several Western countries.
An apartment on Palm Jumeirah is registered to Duma deputy Alexander Borodai from Putin’s United Russia party. He rose to prominence as head of government of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic shortly after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014. The US, EU and UK have also sanctioned him.
In total, the leak includes around 800,000 property shares in Dubai and 274,000 people and companies from 197 countries and territories. 191,000 of them are foreign owners. Citizens and companies from India and the UK form the largest groups, followed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. More than 2,000 owners included in the leak live in Germany, with almost 4,500 properties listed.
According to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the data also includes the names of several suspects against whom authorities in Germany, Denmark and Belgium are investigating because of tax-damaging cum-ex stock transactions. The most prominent example is the Brit Sanjay Shah, who is suspected of having relieved the Danish tax authorities by the equivalent of more than one billion euros with his hedge fund – also using German banks. Shah denies any wrongdoing.
Authorities in Germany are also using the Dubai data set to investigate
The data are apparently also known to the German tax authorities. According to the report, tax officials from several federal states have been evaluating an almost identical data set that the federal government bought in June 2021 for around two million euros for around eleven months.
According to the SZ, investigators in Bavaria are investigating suspected tax offenses in six cases, with a total of 281 test cases. At the request of the SZ, Saarland writes of cases “in the low single digits”; Baden-Württemberg speaks of a single-digit number of investigations.
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Source: Stern
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
