R. Abramovičius criticizes Lithuania’s deliberations on the revocation of citizenship acquired by birth

Minister Agnė Bilotaitė informed about such changes in legal acts after the investigative journalism center “Siena” announced that two children of R. Abramovičius – Anna and Arkadijus – have Lithuanian passports and possibly helped their father circumvent international sanctions.

“R. Abramovičius’ children, like all other descendants of persecuted Lithuanian Jews, have an absolute legal right to their citizenship,” his press representative said in a statement. “The fact that the Government of Lithuania did not mention this context is a misleading and shameful fact.”

As previously reported by BNS, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda also criticized such a proposal, stating that “it is not very good to start changing our laws, targeting them at a specific case, specific individuals”.

He claimed that the Lithuanian institutions must check whether the children of the Russian billionaire were granted Lithuanian citizenship in accordance with the legal acts. Among other things, the authorities must assess whether the Russian billionaire’s children contributed to the circumvention of European Union sanctions.

In her turn, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said earlier on Thursday that if citizenship is acquired in order to circumvent international sanctions, its deprivation can be decided by changing the laws of the country.

The Migration Department confirmed a little earlier that citizenship was granted to R. Abramovičius’ two children even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while R. Abramovičius himself does not have Lithuanian citizenship.

According to an international journalistic investigation, the Lithuanian passports of Arkadius and Anna Abramovičius were used for operations, which experts consider as an attempt to circumvent the sanctions applied to the billionaire, announced after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year.

R. Abramović’s children participated in changing the structure of his property management.

The leaked documents showed that in at least one of the ten funds managed by the billionaire, the mentioned two descendants of R. Abramovičius were indicated as beneficiaries with Lithuanian citizenship.