New evidences reveal that the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich made his fortune through corrupt deals and fraud. The Chelsea owner made billions after buying an oil company from the Russian government in a rigged auction in 1995.
Abramovich paid around $250m (£190m) for Sibneft, before selling it back to the Russian government for $13bn in 2005. However, his lawyers say there is no basis for alleging he has amassed very substantial wealth through criminality.
The Russian billionaire was sanctioned by the UK government last week because of his links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr Abramovich's assets have been frozen and he has been disqualified as a director of Chelsea Football Club.
The Russian billionaire has already admitted in a UK court that he made corrupt payments to help get the Sibneft deal off the ground. He was being sued in London by his former business associate Boris Berezovsky in 2012.
Roman Abramovich won the case, but he described in court how the original Sibneft auction was rigged in his favour and how he gave Mr Berezovsky $10m to pay off a Kremlin official.
Our journalists have obtained a document that is thought to have been smuggled out of Russia.
The information was given to us by a confidential source, who says it was secretly copied from files held on Mr Abramovich by Russian law enforcement agencies.
We cannot verify that, but checks with other sources in Russia have backed up many of the details in the five-page document.
The document says that the Russian government was cheated out of $2.7bn in the Sibneft deal - a claim supported by a 1997 Russian parliamentary investigation. The document also says that the Russian authorities wanted to charge Mr Abramovich with fraud.
Source: Deutsche Welle
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