Russian billionaire Arkady Volozh still owns a property in Amsterdam, while he is under European Union sanctions. Volozj, founder of Russian search engine Yandex, remained out of sight of the Dutch government due to a property construction. As a result, the Netherlands has not yet taken any measures.
Volozj bought the property on Vossiusstraat in two stages, in 2018 and 2019. He paid 3.4 million euros for the mansion right next to Vondelpark, according to research by NRC and The Green Amsterdammer with the help of the Offshore Knowledge Centre.
The Tel Aviv-based Russian bought the house through Paraseven Limited. The company is based in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, an island nation known for its lack of transparency. Due to negligence on the part of Volozj, it is possible to find out through the notarial deed that he is the owner.
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Volozh has been on the sanctions list of the European Union since June. According to Brussels officials, he supports the Kremlin in the war in Ukraine. The search engine of the company where he was still CEO at the time promotes propaganda and filters out critical search results, is the accusation.
EU member states are expected to map and freeze all assets of sanctioned Russians. Finland froze shares and income of the Finnish branch of Yandex in August, business newspaper reports Helsingin Sanomat. Volozj had already resigned as CEO of the company by then. Finnish operations include a taxi service and a data center.
gone unnoticed
Minister Wopke Hoekstra (Foreign Affairs, CDA) wrote several times in letters to the House of Representatives that there are no signs that sanctioned Russians own real estate in the Netherlands. A spokesman said he had not received any indications to date. National sanctions coordinator Stef Blok concluded in his final report in May that the Dutch real estate market would hardly be of interest to Russian sanctioned persons. He noted, however, that it is not always easy to find out the real owner of a foreign company. The fact that the Dutch government misses sanctions as a result is apparent in Volozh’s case.
Volozh still has 8.6 percent of the shares in the internet company he founded through a family trust, the company reported to the Russian news agency Tass in June. That accounts for 45.3 percent of the voting rights of Yandex, which has its registered office in the Netherlands. The company itself is not on the sanctions list. It is unclear whether the Dutch government, like the Finnish government, has frozen or will freeze assets or assets of Yandex.
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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in an email that “it is not possible to comment on individual cases and indicate whether assets have been frozen because of the supervisory confidentiality of that information.” Furthermore, the ministry points out that the company Yandex as such is not on the EU sanctions list and that Arkady Volozh has renounced his voting rights on the board of Yandex. The internet company and the billionaire himself could not be reached for comment.
This is the first article on the use of offshore companies in the Dutch real estate market. More later this week. The publication was made possible with the support of the Special Journalistic Projects Fund (fondsbjp.nl).