One of the biggest backers of the legal US cannabis industry was Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, leaked documents have revealed.
Records show Abramovich invested $130 million and provided $194 million in loans to US weed firms between 2016 and 2018, when US states were increasingly shifting from illegal to legal markets.
Abramovich was the owner of Chelsea Football Club, one of the world’s biggest football clubs, before he was sanctioned in the UK, Europe and Canada in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
The main beneficiary of the oligarch’s millions was Massachusetts-based cannabis producer Curaleaf, which has 146 stores in 21 US states and is now the largest licensed weed company in the world. He also invested in other firms including a weed delivery service and cannabis vaping companies.
The revelation came after a huge cache of 30,000 files from Cyprus-based accounting company Meritservus, of which Abramovich was a customer, was leaked onto the non-profit Distributed Denial of Secrets website in December. The records were processed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and analysed by news site Forensics News and financial magazine Barron’s. Abramovich has so far not responded to reports about his heavy investment in the US weed industry.
Files showed Abramovich pumped $225 million into Curaleaf, then known as Palliatech, between 2015 and 2017 via a British Virgin Islands-registered company called Cetus Investments. Abramovich was allegedly referred to by Cetus staff only as “Mr Blue” – Chelsea’s nickname is “the Blues”.
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