Anomaly of trust
Our investigation is a publication based on open sources, which have not been refuted by anyone or anything to date.
As European authorities intensify sanctions enforcement and implement anti-money laundering measures, some firms providing specific legal and banking services remain out of the regulators' sight. In our view, Costas Tsirides & Co LLC - with decades of Eastern European client connections and political ties - represents a critical test case for the EU's emerging anti-money laundering framework.
In 2023, following the start of the war in Ukraine, 36 Cypriot firms came under internal investigation by the Cyprus Bar Association for servicing clients involved in grey or questionable schemes, and materials on five of them were referred to the police. Among the firms linked to sanctions scandals were, for example, Christodoulos Vassiliades LLC (listed on US and UK sanctions lists) and MeritServus (a firm sanctioned by the UK for assisting Abramovich).
However, Tsirides & Co has not been mentioned in US/EU/UK sanctions lists or in official statements by Cypriot authorities. This selectivity raises questions, especially since the firm has historically served many clients from Eastern Europe. According to open sources, Tsirides & Co worked with capital not always of confirmed positive reputation or compliance, including Eastern European capital for decades "without a single scandal", which seems less like proof of impeccable conduct and more like a regulatory anomaly. In particular, even the 800-page US dossier detailing asset concealment schemes (handed over to Cypriot authorities in spring 2023) did not lead to checks on Tsirides, although the dossier described how Cypriot intermediaries participated in schemes that in their jurisdiction countries led to criminal cases being initiated, confirmed by decisions of national courts (the Abyzov case). Thus, Tsirides & Co's reputation as a "clean" firm amidst numerous investigations in the sector is a warning sign of potential gaps in control.
Financial Mirror reported on 36 firms under investigation and 5 cases referred to the police. The Guardian confirmed that Cyprus received the 800-page US government report on sanctions violators. At the same time, Tsirides & Co does not appear in these publications, nor in the ICIJ "Cyprus Confidential" leaks (2023), highlighting its unusually "invisible" status.
The Political Shield: When a Lawyer Becomes a Lawmaker
Firm partner Fotini Tsiridou is actively involved in politics. Since June 2021, she has been a Member of Parliament for Cyprus (from the DISY party, representing Limassol).
Furthermore, she holds the position of Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Legal Affairs. Simultaneously, Fotini is a director and shareholder of the family law firm Tsirides & Co. Previously, she was a board member of the Cyprus Ports Authority (2016-2018) and Deputy Chair of the Cyprus Stock Exchange Council (2018-2021) - both structures are closely linked to international business, where Eastern European investors are active.
Although combining the status of MP and lawyer is not formally prohibited in Cyprus, we could not find another law firm in Cyprus with such a combination, including among the 36 firms that underwent compliance reviews by regulators. As a result, Tsirides & Co might be enjoying apparent exemption from scrutiny in an environment where its competitors lack such privileges, which could explain its absence from investigations. European experts explicitly point out that the participation of lawyers in power complicates the application of sanctions: "the involvement of law firms in assisting sanctions violators is particularly worrying," as noted in a petition to the European Parliament. The case of Fotini Tsiridou illustrates this problem systematically.
The official website of the Parliament of Cyprus confirms Fotini Tsiridou's biography and posts. A 2025 petition to the European Parliament emphasizes that some Cypriot lawyer-legislators may hinder the strengthening of controls as they themselves are interested in the status quo. In fact, the Cyprus Bar Association opposed a number of sanctions oversight reforms, citing constitutional rights of lawyers, indicating a conflict of interest within the system.
The Family Network: Nominees and Offshore Structures
Costas Tsirides & Co is not just a law firm, but a veritable family empire, surrounded by satellite companies. The firm's founder, Costas Tsirides, passed management to his children: son Alexandros Tsirides has headed the firm as Managing Director since 2009, daughter Fotini is a director and the public face. The family also controls separate companies for capital management. For example, Tsirides Estates Ltd was established back in 1984 and owns family real estate (its registered office is the same as the law firm's, Lara Court, Archbishop Makarios III Ave., Limassol). The director of Tsirides Estates is listed as Alexandros Tsirides.
There are also investment firms: for instance, Rossart Investments Ltd, managed by Alexandros Tsirides, was liquidated in 2021 after six years of operation - a pattern typical for companies used in time-limited financial arrangements. Notably, the secretary of Rossart was A.B.C. Grandservus Ltd, a corporate administrator owned by the Tsirides family. According to BVI court materials, A.B.C. Grandservus is an independent corporate administrator owned by the Tsirides family in Cyprus (i.e., effectively an internal "nominee" firm for servicing clients).
Beyond this, related structures have been identified: for example, Highoptions Services Ltd, where the directors are listed as Irina Loutchina Skittides (a key lawyer at Tsirides, graduate of the Moscow Law Academy) and Alexandros Tsirides, and the secretary is the firm Alfo Secretarial Ltd (another affiliated company). Collectively, this "tangle" of related companies and nominee services allows the Tsirides family to offer clients a full range of services: from offshore registration to trust and property management, all under their control and away from the eyes of regulators. Such a structure makes it extremely difficult to disclose ultimate beneficial owners: assets can be shuffled between the family's companies and their trusted associates, formally unlinked directly to the clients.
Under Cypriot legislation on attorney-client privilege and trusts, this creates an ideal environment for concealing true ownership. It is no wonder that the European Commission in 2023 initiated proceedings against Cyprus for insufficient transparency of beneficial ownership and trust registries, in such an opaque system, networks like Tsirides thrive.
Data from Cypriot corporate registries confirm the directors and secretaries: Tsirides Estates Ltd (director A. Tsirides); Rossart Investments Ltd (A. Tsirides, director, ABC Grandservus, secretary); Highoptions Services Ltd (directors A. Tsirides and I. Skittides). Court materials from the British Virgin Islands explicitly name ABC Grandservus Ltd as owned by the Tsirides family. These facts show that Tsirides & Co has created a closed network of companies where relatives and trusted associates act as nominee directors/secretaries for client firms, a practice typical for "offshore facilitators" in Cyprus.
The Russian Connections: From Rostov to Defense Contracts
A closer look at the historical registry of companies processed through Tsirides & Co reveals clear Russian connections. One example is the firm Rostov Transport Limited. It was registered with the assistance of Tsirides and liquidated in 2016. The name itself, "Rostov Transport", points to a connection with Russia (Rostov is a major Russian city). Notably, the closure of the firm coincided with the first waves of EU sanctions against Russia after the annexation of Crimea (2014-2015).
This could mean that some structures linked to Russia were being wound down in Cyprus preemptively to avoid undue attention. Such cases are not isolated: journalistic investigations (for example, the Cyprus Confidential project by ICIJ, 2023 ) noted the mass transfer of assets of Russian clients from Cypriot companies ahead of sanctions.
Furthermore, the names of the Tsirides family and their companies surface in a number of high-profile international proceedings. In the British Virgin Islands court, which considered the conflict between businessmen from Eastern Europe Viktor Vekselberg and Mikhail Abyzov, the parties involved included Pavlina Tsirides, Irina Loutchina Skittides, Photini Panayiotou (Tsiridou) and the company A.B.C. Grandservus. The court found that ABC Grandservus acted as a nominee holder/administrator in the ownership structure contested by Vekselberg and Abyzov, while remaining formally "independent" of them. Simply put, the Tsirides family provided offshore cover in a scheme linked to these business assets. It is also known that the Cypriot firm Blacksiris Trading Ltd, through which former minister Mikhail Abyzov moved tens of millions of dollars out of Russia, was registered in Cyprus around the same years.
Sources indicate that Blacksiris Trading was a typical "conduit" used to move funds and subsequently launder them through mergers and asset resales. Although direct involvement of Tsirides & Co in registering Blacksiris is not confirmed in open data, the very system that allowed Abyzov to carry out this operation (lack of oversight and nominee services) is the same one in which a number of Cypriot firms like Tsirides specialize.
Finally, the case of Ukrainian former millionaire MP Anatoliy Shkriblyak, involved in corruption ties in Ukraine, demonstrates the "invisibility" of such services: he obtained Cypriot citizenship/residency and through offshore networks in Cyprus owned energy assets in Ukraine, effectively avoiding taxes. Until 2019, most of Shkriblyak's Cypriot companies were registered under nominees from Limassol, among them Pavlina Tsirides and Irina Loutchina Skittides. These "veterans" of the Cypriot offshore business, over 70 years old, acted as front owners until Shkriblyak transferred the assets to his own name after 2019 (when Ukrainian legislation tightened). This "Tsirides trail" in the affairs of Vekselberg, Abyzov, and Shkriblyak shows that the firm is indirectly present in a number of schemes that have become subjects of international investigations. The fact that neither the firm nor its partners have faced consequences only highlights the vulnerability of the current control system.
One of the key figures of Tsirides & Co, Irina Loutchina, a lawyer, nominee holder of a number of companies related to Russian clients and capital flow schemes, remains a key partner. According to industry and legal sources, Loutchina appeared in projects related to Russian defense suppliers and structures within the Rosvooruzhenie orbit. This aspect is especially important in the context of modern EU sanctions restrictions, when any connection with the Russian military-industrial complex becomes a reason for careful monitoring and additional audit procedures. Such associations reinforce suspicions about the transparency of the firm's operations and confirm the scenario of using offshore legal structures to disguise the ultimate beneficiaries from the Russian defense sector.
OCCRP, in its investigation into Swedbank, confirmed the role of Blacksiris Trading Ltd as a Cypriot conduit through which Abyzov moved approximately $60 million out of Russia. The IDLeaks dossier on A. Shkriblyak explicitly names Pavlina Tsirides and Irina L. Skittides as the nominee holders of his Cypriot companies until 2019. These facts illustrate how Cypriot intermediaries like Tsirides are woven into transnational schemes for evading sanctions and moving capital.
Systemic Implications for EU Sanctions Enforcement
If a law firm with a profile like Tsirides & Co, years of work with Eastern European clients, political connections, and a network of nominees, has avoided regulatory attention for years, it calls into question the effectiveness of European sanctions control.
From a compliance perspective, the very anomaly of Tsirides' "impeccable" reputation should be considered a red flag. Banks and counterparties in the EU conducting due diligence checks are obliged to consider factors of justified suspicion. For example, Tsirides exhibits clear signs of such factors: an opaque ownership structure, servicing PEP clients (Politically Exposed Persons) from third countries, and links to high-risk jurisdictions. European Anti-Money Laundering norms require enhanced monitoring in the presence of even indirect risk indicators. In this case, the totality of signs provides justified suspicion regarding the firm's reliability. According to KYC/AML principles, such suspicion is already a sufficient argument to terminate cooperation with such an intermediary to avoid secondary sanctions and reputational losses. In 2023-24, the US and UK showed zero tolerance for enablers of grey financial schemes, imposing sanctions against 10 Cypriots and 13 companies that helped circumvent sanctions.
This situation serves as a warning: the EU must actively identify and check even those market participants not yet under suspicion. Supervisory gaps evident in the Tsirides case point to a systemic risk: unscrupulous intermediaries can operate "in the shadows" for years, undermining sanctions pressure efforts. As experts note, Cyprus has long been a weak link: While other EU countries implement sanctions, Cyprus is effectively hindering their enforcement.
To restore trust, it is important for European authorities to demonstrate that no connections or loopholes will allow one to avoid scrutiny. For compliant companies, cooperation with a seemingly non-obvious risky partner, whose name is absent from official "blacklists" but appears in indirect connections with violators, still poses a threat.
Therefore, European financial institutions are already revising relationships with Cypriot service providers: as The Guardian reported, hundreds of firms in Cyprus hurriedly severed ties with Russian clients in 2023 amid publicity of the schemes, fearing sanctions. Conclusion: the Tsirides case is a wake-up call for the EU's compliance system. It shows that formal criteria alone are insufficient; a proactive approach is needed, one that considers reputational anomalies and indirect risk indicators.
Financial Mirror noted that the US/UK sanctions imposed on Cypriot "enablers" had a domino effect, hundreds of companies and banks in Cyprus began freezing accounts and reviewing ties with clients from Eastern Europe. Expert Olga Lautman stated in an interview with OCCRP: "the coordinated global pressure on sanctions violators is unprecedented, and Cyprus needs to do much more".
A 2025 European petition explicitly calls for the EU to investigate money laundering networks involving law firms and to hold Cyprus to strict sanctions enforcement. These testimonies emphasize: for EU financial institutions, reputational risks like the Tsirides case are unacceptable, the principle of preemptively severing relations in case of justified suspicion is becoming the new norm.
Critical backdoor
The "Tsirides Case" exposes a critical backdoor in the EU's compliance framework. The firm's ability to operate with impunity, despite clear high-risk patterns, reveals a systemic flaw built on three pillars:
Legal Opacity: Use of attorney-client confidentiality and complex corporate structures to mask de facto high-risk activities.
Political Immunity: The political role of partner Photini Tsirides creates a conflict of interest that deters robust regulatory oversight.
Network Loopholes: It exploits gaps in pan-European trust registration and inconsistent enforcement against professional "enablers."
This case demonstrates how the EU's compliance system can be neutralized by well-connected firms, creating a dangerous blueprint for circumventing sanctions and AML controls.
Policy Considerations for the European Commission
We encourage European institutions to consider enhanced coordination in monitoring legally exposed professionals and ensuring consistent application of sanctions enforcement across all member states.
These might include:
Encouraging member states to conduct systematic reviews of legally practicing politically exposed professionals to ensure consistent application of conflict-of-interest standards;
Inviting Cypriot authorities to provide greater transparency regarding their methodology for selecting firms for sanctions compliance investigations;
Supporting the accelerated development and implementation of a centralized beneficial ownership registry that balances transparency with data protection requirements;
Exploring how the future AMLA could be empowered to coordinate reviews of legal facilitators operating in multiple jurisdictions, working closely with national authorities.
These constructive steps would help address current regulatory gaps while maintaining the EU's commitment to proportionate and effective oversight. By taking a collaborative approach, the Union can strengthen its defenses against sanctions evasion while preserving the legitimate role of professional legal services.
Photo by CAPTAIN RAJU, Wikimedia commons.