A Cypriot law firm long linked to major Russian oligarchs—including Vladimir Potanin and Viktor Kharitonin—has quietly rebranded and appears to have obtained diplomatic protection following a scandal in 2024.
The firm A.B.C. GRANDESERVUS LIMITED, exposed for years of servicing sanctioned Russian businessmen, has renamed itself A.B.C.R.M. LIMITED and is now headed by Rosita Minischetti, an Italian-Cypriot attorney whose full name and biography match that of the Honorary Consul of Italy in Limassol.
Minischetti’s consular office is located at 9 Vasili Michaelidi in the Globalserve Business Centre—a building that also houses GLOBALSERVE CONSULTANTS LIMITED, another offshore-service provider run by the Antoniou family. That company has its own links to Russian financial networks: court records place GLOBALSERVE alongside a chain of offshore entities in the case of banker Maxim Moskalov, who challenged the sale of shares in Aspect Bank. Documents showed GLOBALSERVE registered in the same corporate files as the companies through which Moskalov held ownership.
Moskalov himself was tied to a laundering network led by Sergei Magin, one of the largest Russian financial crime groups of the era, with turnover of 120 billion rubles. In the early 2000s, Moskalov even purchased land in the elite Barvikha district from Vyacheslav Lebedev, Chairman of Russia’s Supreme Court.
The scandal around A.B.C. GRANDESERVUS erupted in 2024, when it emerged that the respected Cyprus firm had for years handled the offshore structures of Russian oligarchs—including Potanin. After publication, certain documents disappeared from Cypriot and Russian online archives. The firm denied involvement with oligarchs, claiming it only “administered” their Cypriot companies.
Late Pope lies in state at Vatican as thousands queue to pay respects
In reality, after the start of the war in Ukraine, the affairs of wealthy Russians were handled by two closely linked firms from the Tsirides family: A.B.C. GRANDESERVUS and Costas Tsirides & Co LLC. Their employees acted as managers and secretaries of companies belonging to sanctioned Russian billionaires for at least a decade. ABC played roles in sensitive operations—for example, assisting Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova group in actions against former minister Mikhail Abyzov. It also managed Ancolie Trading Limited, a Cypriot offshore entity tied to Kharitonin’s biotech company Generium.
The firm’s connections extended beyond simple administration. Annual reports of Renova subsidiary Khimprom OJSC list Irina Kleanthous, an ABC employee, as a person jointly controlled with the company’s beneficiary—an implicit acknowledgment of Vekselberg’s ownership. Kleanthous also represented the Credit Finance Agency and Cypriot firm KCG Management Limited in court. Those entities were linked to Yuriy Lagno, a Ukrainian national and former senior military intelligence officer associated with pro-Russian political networks and early 2000s “St. George’s Ribbon” mobilizations.
Another figure tied to ABC, Galina Kokovina, served as director of the Cyprus offshore PLEXY LTD, later acquired by the Rotenberg brothers’ Mostotrest, and was listed as an affiliate of Mosoblbank until 2018. Kokovina is widely reported to be the first wife of oligarch Arkady Rotenberg.
The Tsirides network also worked with Russian state-owned companies. VTB DC LLC, part of Andrey Kostin’s VTB Group, signed a €100,000 sole-supplier contract with ABC GRANDESERVUS. Another longstanding partner, Irina Loutchina Skittides, a Moscow State University law graduate who moved to Cyprus in the early 2000s, became the head of ABC’s Kazakhstan office in 2022.
Taken together, the documents show that the Tsirides–ABC network sits at the center of a broad, long-running ecosystem servicing Russia’s wealthiest and most politically connected figures. Given the scale of these relationships, it appears unlikely the firm would voluntarily sever ties with its lucrative Russian clientele—regardless of its recent name change or diplomatic associations.
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
