Russian oligarch still owned Italian resort months after sanctions, filing shows

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Russian oligarch Musa Bazhaev still owned a Sardinian luxury resort more than two months after the EU imposed sanctions on him following Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, a corporate filing shows.

The disclosure was made in an annual statutory document filed in Cyprus on June 26 2022 by Retivia Investments, a Cyprus-based entity that owns the famed Forte Village hotel as well as other assets in Sardinia worth more than €700mn.

The filing raises questions over why Italian authorities did not move to freeze the assets in the weeks following April 8 2022, when Bazhaev was put on the EU sanctions list. French authorities seized the oligarch’s villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat at the end of April.

Bazhaev’s ownership of the Forte Village was public knowledge since at least 2014 and the Russian donated €500,000 to the Sardinian civil protection agency during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Italian financial police, the Guardia di Finanza, declined to comment, citing “lack of authorisation to discuss the matter”.

The June filing also contradicts another publicly available document filed to the Cypriot company registry a month later, on July 26 2022, stating Retivia Investments had been sold to a relative of Bazhaev on February 25 2022, a day after the invasion.

The discrepancy over the assets’ ownership in the June and July filings raises questions about the timing or reality of the transfer of these assets.

A spokesperson for Bazhaev did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the Cyprus company registry said the ownership changes submitted in July were examined and processed according to the law and with the permission national sanctions authorities in Cyprus.

The EU has struggled to close loopholes in its sanctions regime against Russia to limit its funding for the war in Ukraine.

In early 2023 Retivia Investments and its assets, including Forte Village, was transferred to Kazakh businessman Shukhrat Ibragimov, according to company records. He is the chief executive of Luxembourg-based Eurasian Resources Group, one of the world’s largest producers of cobalt and copper.

A spokesperson for Ibragimov declined to comment.

Built in the 1970s and named after hotelier Sir Charles Forte, the Forte Village is located in Pula on the southern coast of Sardinia. It is a favourite among celebrities and jet-setters willing to pay more than €10,000 a person for a week’s stay during the high season.

Bazhaev, who was born in Chechnya, is one of Russia’s richest men with interests spanning the oil, metals and commodities sectors. The 58-year-old is president of the JSC Alliance Group, which according to the EU “supports a number of significant companies in the Russian gas, oil, and telecommunications sectors”.

He is also chair of Russian Platinum which Brussels said provides a “substantial source of revenue to the Government of the Russian Federation”. Bazhaev has remained on the EU and UK sanctions lists.

Retivia’s current owner Ibragimov was Bazhaev’s co-investor in Jeruy, Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest gold mine. The mine was inaugurated in 2021 by the country’s president Sadyr Japarov and Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.

In late 2022, Ibragimov’s 40 per cent stake in the gold mine was transferred to a Russian company owned by the Bazhaevs, which became its sole shareholder, Cypriot company records show.

Additional reporting by Simon Foy in London