The National Enforcement Agency has seized the Kirkkonummi vacation properties of sanctioned Russian business executive and former state official Boris Alyoshin.
The agency seized two adjacent lots valued at 2.5 million euros, at the request of the Finnish Foreign Ministry. The main property is a 1.6-hectare seafront holiday home lot that Alyoshin bought for 2.3 million euros in 2018.
Two years later, in 2020, the Defence Ministry granted him permission to purchase the neighbouring lot for 250,000 euros.
In his land permit application submitted to the Ministry of Defence in the summer of 2020, Alyoshin stated that he spent his summers fishing in the waters around Kirkkonummi. He said he wanted to purchase the adjacent 8,000-square-metre plot to build a new vacation home because the building rights for his first property had been exhausted. The properties are near Långvik in southwest Kirkkonummi, site of a formerly Russian-owned spa hotel.
Russian defence industry links
The EU added the 68-year-old to its sanction list last June for his links to Russia's defence industry, including companies manufacturing MiG and Sukhoi fighter jets as well as drones.
In 2021, the newsmagazine Suomen Kuvalehti suggested that in the early 2000s Alyoshin served as a deputy prime minister for industrial policy, later working with companies linked to the aviation industry. According to the BBC, Alyoshin was head of the Russian Federal State Agency for Industries.
The National Enforcement Agency had kept Alyoshin's name secret, but Finnish news agency STT said it had confirmed his identity and property ownership through other sources.
Last week police assisted the National Enforcement Authority in an operation on an island owned by arms manufacturer Igor Kesaev, who is suspected of having ties to the Russian security service FSB.
8.11: Corrected spelling of Alyoshin, BBC reference and location of properties.
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