‘Our credibility must be safeguarded’: Cyprus in turmoil after Russia sanctions

Island shuts 10,000 Russian bank accounts as US and UK put Cypriot lawyers and accountants under sanctions for enabling oligarchs including Roman Abramovich

• How Cypriot firm helped ‘Orthodox oligarch’ after sanctions
• Family firm that helped pour Abramovich’s millions into Chelsea

Back-to-back meetings, an air of discernible panic, policymakers engaged in frantic damage limitation and Cyprus once again in the eye of a Russia-related storm. It’s been an unusually fraught fortnight for the Mediterranean island’s newly installed president, arduous in ways that Nikos Christodoulides might never have imagined when he assumed office on 1 March.

First came the news that 13 Cypriot entities and individuals had been placed on Anglo-American sanctions lists for enabling Russian oligarchs. The measures were aimed at dismantling the financial networks of Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov, both close allies of Vladimir Putin. Overnight, bank accounts and other assets belonging to their alleged “financial fixers” were frozen.