Good morning. Earlier this week the Guardian published Cyprus confidential, an investigation which picked through 3.6m documents to report on how Russian oligarchs have used Cyprus’s outsized financial sector to structure their wealth and, once the war in Ukraine began, shield their assets to avoid sanctions.
The cache of documents was leaked by an anonymous source in Cyprus to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Germany’s Paper Trail Media, which shared access with the Guardian, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and dozens of other reporting partners around the world. The story that emerges is depressingly familiar: billionaires with shady histories using global networks and offshore financial centres to avoid scrutiny. But, as an EU member state, Cyprus is subject to strict rules and regulations around sanctions, taxes and the flow of money.
