Secret services in Portugal believe wealthy Russians are using Portuguese, and even Ukrainian residents, in money-laundering schemes and business ventures that violate economic sanctions imposed in 2022, in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
An article in Expresso reveals that national authorities are currently investigating 26 such cases, involving bank accounts containing millions of euros and belonging to Russians who were ‘in the process of purchasing luxury real estate’ when investigators sounded the alert.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, in several cases the money enters Portugal through ‘complex business structures, with bases in other European countries, and with the help of intermediaries to hide the true origin of the funds’.
One of the most recent cases under investigation involves a Russian businessman who lived in Lisbon for four months and who had “suspicious links with the south of Spain.
“The Russian ran, until the beginning of 2025, what PJ judicial police have described as a “money-laundering multinational” – charging commissions of 2%-3% for money that he laundered from all over Europe”.
Just ‘per day’ money laundered ran into hundreds of thousands of euros, with ramifications in southern Spain and a number of Schengen Space countries, says Expresso.
Another ‘big case’ among those that have seen around €25 million ‘frozen’ and kept from their account holders was denounced in 2022 by an anti-corruption investigator who exposed high-end property investments in Cascais, linked to Russian vice-prime minister Tatyana Golikova.
Authorities in Portugal have also frozen the bank account of a former Russian banker who was in the process of purchasing an apartment in Cascais for €800,000.
A common thread running through all these cases appears to be the use of Portuguese (sometimes even Ukrainian) intermediaries “to dispel the origin of the money”. And there is also the reality that in recent years it is always Russians who are prepared to pay the highest prices for real estate in Lisbon – in some cases double the amount per square metre that other nationalities will accept paying.
According to Expresso, the government considers it “essential” that this kind of criminal activity is stopped (as it “affects the position of Portugal in the context of its international duties and when it comes to global security”). Thus, the violation of economic sanctions is being put on a par with terrorism in the draft law for criminal policy currently under discussion in parliament.
What Expresso’s article does concede is that in the midst of all the zeal to ‘out’ Russian criminals, “there are tens of Russians – many of them resident in this country for many years – whose bank accounts have been frozen in Portugal without justification. And some of these foreign residents have suffered ‘financial difficulties’ as a result.
But the text marks a real ‘about-change’ in Portugal’s perceived attitude to applying international sanctions, which, in the not-so-distant past, carried an air of ambivalence.
Source: Expresso/ ZAP
