This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A Russian oligarch whose daughter married Roman Abramovich has either paid no British tax or been treated as a non-domicile, despite living in the UK for 23 years.

Documents from the Panama Papers show that the oil magnate Alexander Zhukov, 62, is linked to a sprawling network of offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.



Although he was awarded British citizenship in 2001 and issued with a British passport, Zhukov has had long periods in which he did not pay British tax.

Zhukov moved to London in 1993. For the next eight years, he enjoyed non-dom status, paying tax only on his UK income. After getting a UK passport, Zhukov declared himself a tax resident in Moscow.

Alexander Zhukov: what we know about the Russian oil magnate Read more

A spokesman for Zhukov confirmed that he had become a non-dom again from 5 April 2016, the start of the current tax year. The date is two days after the Panama Papers were published. Between 2003 and 2016, he was a “tax resident in Russia”.

Alexander Ratskevich said Zhukov paid a total of £1m in tax during his previous stint as a non-dom in the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Though there is no suggestion that Zhukov has done anything wrong, his case will give fresh ammunition to tax campaigners who say the current system needs to be changed.



Alex Cobham of the Tax Justice Network said: “Direct taxation for wealthy individuals has simply become a game. The willingness of jurisdictions such as the UK to provide opaque, low or no-tax arrangements for an international elite is an affront to the public.

“Why is the anonymous ownership of companies still tolerated? Some progress has been made, not least thanks to the Panama Papers, but governments need to move much more quickly.”

Chido Dunn of Global Witness said the government should stop “rolling out the red carpet to anyone that can afford it”. She said checks carried out on rich foreigners who bought luxury homes in London were “woefully inadequate”, and the “vast majority” granted visas or UK passports were Russian or Chinese.

The Guardian has established that Zhukov is the beneficial owner of several offshore companies, including Kentgrove Investments Limited.



A scan of his British passport is among leaked emails from Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers scandal. A 2015 electricity bill gives his address as a £13m penthouse flat in Kensington, west London.

While his daughter, Dasha, is an art collector and gallery owner, Zhukov made his fortune in oil.

Despite keeping a low public profile, the story of his rise to wealth has been reported because of a prosecution brought against him by Italian police.

In 2001, Zhukov was accused of being involved with mafia gangs in Ukraine and held in prison for six months. He vehemently denied the allegations and successfully defended himself. Zhukov admits meeting and doing business with some of Odessa’s criminal figures, but says this was before their illegal connections became apparent.

However, the case gave a fascinating insight into his background and the company that he kept at the time.

In the 1990s, Zhukov co-founded Sintez UK, a company involved in shipping Russian crude oil to the port of Odessa, in Ukraine, which was allegedly run by mafia gangs at the time.

In 1998, Italian police launched a major investigation into the Ukrainian mafia, which concluded that the problem of organised crime in Odessa was very serious, with mobsters “in possession of a great quantity of weapons such as guns, machine guns and explosives”.

A report by the special police unit servizio centralo operativo includes a reference to Zhukov in a graphic. It also mentions Alexander Angert, a violent Odessa godfather who lives in London and still plays a role in the city’s politics. Angert’s company Transcargo shared a Mayfair address with Zhukov’s Sintez UK.

Italian police arrested Zhukov at Olbia airport in Sardinia in 2001 as he was heading to his villa in nearby Porto Cervo. Detectives accused him of being part of a ring that tried to smuggle weapons from Ukraine and Belarus to the former Yugoslavia in 1994. The alleged shipment, apparently destined for Venice and hidden aboard the Jadran Express container vessel, was said to have included grenades, anti-tank weapons and 30,0000 Kalashnikovs.

While Zhukov spent six months in prison in Turin, he was interviewed by Belgian police and later acquitted. He told Russian newspaper Kommersant: “I am completely innocent of arms dealing.” The court held that the underlying facts “did not exist”. His lawyers said the proceedings were “totally without merit”.

According to his spokesman, Zhukov knew Angert and Leonid Minin, an international arms dealer, who was one of the inspirations for Yuri Orlov, the fictional character played by Nicolas Cage in the film Lord of War.

Minin was arrested in 2000 when police found him in a Milan hotel with four prostitutes, cocaine, $150,000 (£113,000) in cash and African diamonds worth $500m. He was convicted of drug possession and sentenced to two years in prison.

However, Zhukov’s spokesman told the Guardian that his client’s oil companies were only involved in lawful arms-length “commercial transactions” with Minin’s firms.

These were “fully legitimate”, he said, adding that Minin did not have “nasty reputational issues” at the time.

Separately, Italy’s parliament named Zhukov in a 464-page report into Russian organised crime in 2005. It called Zhukov an “important member” of the Solntsevskaya gang, Russia’s most powerful international crime syndicate, with a base in Rome.

Zhukov strongly denies the allegation. He has never been arrested, charged or convicted of any related offences.

Zhukov’s UK citizenship will not endear him to Russia’s hawkish president, Vladimir Putin. UK-Russian relations have been strained since the murder of the former Russian secret service officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. In January, a public inquiry concluded that Putin had “probably approved” the dissident’s killing. Putin has called for “de-offshorisation” and urged rich businesspeople to bring their fortunes home.

Since 2014, Russians are obliged to declare foreign citizenship. This follows a law that was introduced as relations with the west worsened when Russia annexed Crimea. Human rights groups that receive western funding now have to register as “foreign agents”.

Russians with second passports have been weighing up whether to abide by the law or keep quiet and hope that their second citizenship is not discovered. Zhukov says his UK citizenship has been properly declared “in accordance with law”.

Zhukov says he “knows well” but is not close to Gennady Trukhanov, the mayor of Odessa, who was named by Italian police as an influential member of the city’s oil mafia. Trukhanov worked in the 1990s for Sintez and has also admitted knowing Minin and Angert. According to Mikheil Saakashvili, Odessa’s regional governor, Angert flew into the city in 2015 on a private jet to influence the mayoral election.

Trukhanov’s office did not respond to requests for comment. The mayor faced protests in Odessa in April after his Russian passport was found in the Panama Papers.