Lithuanian President orders to check issuance of passports to Abramovich's children

Amid reports that the children of businessman Roman Abramovich, who is under EU sanctions, have Lithuanian citizenship, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has ordered to investigate "whether the law was applied correctly."

Source. This was reported by The Insider with reference to LRT.

Earlier, the international consortium OCCRP and its Lithuanian partner Siena said that two of Roman Abramovich's children, 30-year-old Arkady and 31-year-old Anna, had been granted Lithuanian citizenship.

Arkadiy Abramovich received his Lithuanian passport on February 22, 2022, two days before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is not known when Anna Abramovich received her passport.

Speaking to Bloomberg, the billionaire's representative said that "Mr. Abramovich's children, like all other descendants of Lithuanian Jews who were persecuted, have an absolutely legitimate right to citizenship."

"The fact that the Lithuanian government did not mention this context is misleading and shameful," the source said.

In January 2023, The Guardian wrote that seven of Abramovich's children became beneficiaries of trusts with assets worth at least $4 billion. The businessman had transferred control of the trusts to them before the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, the newspaper wrote.

Background. Earlier it became known that Abramovich made his children citizens of Lithuania to avoid sanctions.