Russian bankers invest in Algarve

Two founders of the Russian bank Promsvyazbank, one of the banks sanctioned by the EU because of the Ukraine war, have bought up properties in Alvor, Portimão.

The two multimillionaire bothers Ananiev have acquired various properties in the Algarve over the past 15 years reports the newspaper Expresso.
According to the investigative journalists on the newspaper, the purchase of these latest properties in 2020 and 2021 might be “shady”.
Despite no longer being the owners of the properties, the way that these transactions were handled seems to indicate that one of the brothers, Alexei Ananiev, could have used stooges to conceal their property investment assets in Portugal.
Dimitry and Alexei Ananiev began building their fortune by importing computers to Russia and founded Promsvazbank in 1995. Dimitry was a senator in the Russian Senate or higher parliament between 2006-2013.
In 2017, according to Forbes magazine, one of the brothers had a fortune of US$1.4Bn. In 2018 they were on the US treasury department’s ‘Putin List’ of 96 oligarchs released after Russian interference in the US presidential elections in 2016.
And in 2017, the Russian Central Bank accused the Russian bothers of having fraudulently hidden a huge financial black hole. After being charged of fraud, the two brothers left Russia, Alexei went to the UK and Dimitry to Cyprus.
The bank they had owned fell into administration and was taken over by the Russian Central Bank in 2017.
Russia authorities put out a warrant for their arrest and charged them with embezzling around US$1.6Bn. The brothers through their lawyers said that arrest warrant and charges were politically motivated.