Paris appeals court upholds seizure of Riviera villa tied to married Russian cabinet ministers

A Paris appeals court ruled that French authorities lawfully seized a Riviera villa belonging to former Russian Industry Minister Viktor Khristenko, the French newspaper Le Monde reported, citing a judicial source.

The villa, called Maïgrana, sits on the Cap-Ferrat peninsula along the Mediterranean coast. French authorities seized it in October 2022.

The seizure order upheld by the appeals court states that Khristenko and his wife Tatyana Golikova, who serves as a Russian deputy prime minister, are suspected of holding substantial hidden assets, including real estate in Spain, Portugal, and France. Those properties — villas, golf clubs, a hotel, and other assets — were described in an investigation published on Alexei Navalny’s website in October 2022, when he was already behind bars. Navalny’s team alleged that Khristenko and Golikova registered all their property in the names of foundations and foreign companies.

In early March 2022, almost immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Maïgrana villa was sold. French authorities deemed the transaction suspicious and opened an investigation, ultimately uncovering a chain of shell companies registered in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands. The case files named companies directly linked to Khristenko himself and his son Vladimir. The French company that bought the villa also proved to be under their control.

Le Monde reported that Khristenko and his family had effectively sold the villa to themselves — what the paper described as a “circular transfer of ownership.”

The Paris appeals court concluded that the elaborate schemes used to conceal the villa’s actual owner justify the seizure. Le Monde said financial investigators had been eagerly awaiting the ruling as they tracked Russian-owned property in France acquired through dubious means. The decision also set a significant precedent: courts had previously tended to apply a presumption of money laundering, but this ruling effectively established the principle that owners must prove their assets were legally acquired.