"Alleged Russian Tax Fraud Mastermind Funneled Millions Into Luxury Dubai Properties", 23 July 2025

...OCCRP reporters found that among the early investors was a company owned by Dmitry Klyuev, the alleged mastermind of a massive Russian tax scandal known as the Magnitsky Affair.

The Magnitsky Affair was named after whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison after giving evidence to Russian prosecutors about the fraud, only to be arrested himself on tax evasion charges. The fraud scheme he exposed involved $230 million being stolen from the Russian state and siphoned out of the country through a maze of shell companies.

OCCRP reporters’ new findings show that an offshore company owned by Klyuev paid for luxury property at two Kempinski resorts around the same time the fraud came to light and Magnitsky was arrested and jailed.

Although financial records obtained by the reporters don’t provide a complete picture of where the money used by Klyuev’s company to purchase properties came from, they found that around the time of several of the real estate deals, the offshore firm received millions of dollars from two companies involved in processing funds from the Magnitsky Affair. The timing of the events raises questions over whether the property investments may have been funded with money connected to the fraud scheme. 

Klyuev did not respond to questions. Kempinski Hotels did not respond to an invitation to comment...

Leaked corporate filings show that Klyuev was the sole owner of a British Virgin Islands (BVI) company called Virginia Invest & Finance S.A. from 2006 to 2011. Reporters found evidence that during that time, the company spent some $15 million dollars on a villa and four luxury apartments in Dubai...

Reporters found that the company was registered in 2005 in the BVI, a jurisdiction that offers corporate secrecy, keeping Klyuev’s involvement hidden behind corporate services providers.

However, leaked corporate filings from Cyprus-based services provider ConnectedSky Legal & Corporate Consultants Ltd revealed that Klyuev was the sole shareholder of Virginia Invest & Finance from 2006 until 2011, when he transferred ownership to Sergey Smorodin, a former regional minister in Russia. 

Management of the company was handed over to ConnectedSky under a January 2013 letter replacing its previous BVI services provider Trident Trust (BVI) Ltd...

Reporters analyzed Virginia Invest & Finance bank statements with Dubai property transactions data to establish the extent and value of the real estate payments made by Klyuev’s company. The records show the firm, while under Kyluev’s ownership, financed the acquisition of four luxury apartments at Kempinski Hotel & Residences and a villa at the neighboring Kempinski Emerald Palace (later rebranded as Raffles The Palm Dubai) for a total of at least $12.5 million...

The seven properties acquired by Virginia Invest & Finance between 2007 and 2012 that were confirmed in the Dubai property data were all sold either at a loss or for roughly the same price they were originally purchased...

The sales were not “definitive proof of money laundering,” Westmore said, but they should have attracted extra scrutiny...

OCCRP has previously reported on Klyuev’s taste for luxury real estate. In 2023 reporters found that a company he owned had spent $3.3 million on a villa at a resort called Cap St Georges in Cyprus in October 2009 – just one month before Magnitsky’s death in a Moscow prison.
That investigation also revealed that two Klyuev-linked companies — BVI-registered Vicolo Corporation and Mander Holding & Finance Ltd — received funds from firms the U.S. Treasury alleged were involved in the Magnitsky Affair tax fraud scheme...