correction
A previous version of this story inaccurately described Roman Abramovich’s connection to the Chelsea Football Club. He is its owner and was recently disqualified as its director.
In the weeks since the invasion of Ukraine began, the Israeli Foreign Ministry formed a task force to investigate the influence some Russian business executives, including those with alleged ties to the Kremlin, have in Israel. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also warned his fellow cabinet members last month against granting the oligarchs favors, saying such a move would cause diplomatic damage, according to an official present at the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
“Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other Western countries,” Lapid said during a visit to Slovakia on Monday.
Israel’s Channel 12 News reported last week that the government plans to limit the amount of time private planes and yachts are allowed to stay at Israeli airports and docks to just 48 hours. The move comes as a flurry of rented private jets departing Russian cities and bound for Tel Aviv raised speculation that Moscow’s well-heeled elite are fleeing for Mediterranean shores.
At least 14 rented private planes have departed from Moscow and landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in the past 12 days, Channel 12 News reported Friday. Western nations, including Britain, the United States and European Union, have all imposed sanctions on some of Russia’s most prominent business executives.
“Some of them have arrived, not with their own planes, and are staying at the houses of their spouses, their friends,” Elise Brezis, director of the Azrieli Center for Economic Policy at Bar-Ilan University in central Israel, said of the Russian oligarchs landing in the country. Last week, she led what she said was a tense meeting with representatives from Israel’s Finance Ministry, the Bank of Israel and other government offices and financial institutions over how to handle the presence of Russian oligarchs in Israel.
A number of wealthy Russian Jews applied for Israeli citizenship after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in part to evade resulting U.S. sanctions. In Israel, they benefited from a law exempting new immigrants from declaring or paying taxes on their income for 10 years. The law was used as a loophole for international money laundering and transformed seaside cities such as Tel Aviv, Caesarea and Herzliya into playgrounds for the ultrarich.
These business executives — including Abramovich and billionaire banker Mikhail Fridman — not only have Israeli passports, but also often own luxury villas and maintain political ties and status as high-level donors and investors in the Israeli economy.
Abramovich, who was placed last week on a U.K. government sanctions list, acquired Israeli citizenship in 2018 and became one of the largest donors to Israeli and Jewish organizations. In late February, as Russian troops encroached on Ukraine’s borders, Abramovich made a donation that was in the “eight figures” to Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial and museum, according to the organization’s chairman, Dani Dayan.
Leonid Nevzlin, a Russian Israeli billionaire who is critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the business executives in his orbit, said Abramovich and others became “Jewish philanthropists, let’s say not from the bottom of their heart, but for protection worldwide.”
“It looks sometimes like they try to use charity money to get influence here and abroad,” he said from his office in Herzliya, in the same neighborhood where, in 2020, Abramovich bought Israel’s most expensive home for $70 million.
Brezis said officials last week agreed that, on the question of oligarchs, Israel will officially “say nothing, because our situation is not simple.”
Israel is walking a diplomatic tightrope on Ukraine: It has pledged support for Kyiv, while avoiding direct criticism of Putin. Russia has a large military presence in Syria on Israel’s northern border, and for years, Putin has unofficially allowed Israel to carry out attacks on targets it says are involved in the transfer of weapons to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
But without official directives from the Bank of Israel on how to navigate the sanctions, individual Israeli financial institutions have had to scramble to formulate their own policies, said an Israeli finance official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.
Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel’s largest banks, said on its website only that “in light of the sanctions … there may be disruptions in money transfers to and from Russia and Ukraine.”
“Because Israel has not joined the sanctions, there is an unclear status for sanctioned oligarchs in Israel, which means that Israel could be in trouble in terms of international law,” said Zvi Magen, who served as Israeli ambassador to both Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s.
In an interview with Channel 12 News on Friday, Victoria Nuland, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, warned that Israel did not want “to become the last haven for dirty money that’s fueling Putin’s wars.”
Roman Bronfman, a former member of Israel’s parliament, said that as Russia’s war in Ukraine begins to claim more lives, Israel will be forced to take a stronger stance against Putin and his alleged cronies, who have for decades been bringing their “dark market” money into the country.
“Israel is realizing that the time is now for these oligarchs to pay for their crimes,” he said.
