The French police were unable to confirm or deny on Tuesday whether they had requested assistance from the Cypriot authorities as part of their investigation into alleged large-scale money laundering on the part of two oligarchs who were naturalised as Cypriot citizens under the country’s citizenship through investment scheme.

Local media had reported that France had requested Cypriot assistance in the case against Russian real estate developers Ruslan Goryukhin and Mikhail Opengeym, but a spokesperson for the French police told the Cyprus Mail they were not in a position to comment on the matter.

Goryukhin made his money in the Russian energy sector, heading companies linked to Russian energy giant Gazprom, while Opengeym was described in the Pandora Papers data leak as a “businessman” who invested in gas drilling and transport companies.

The French police had opened an investigation into the pair in March last year, with their luxury villas on the French Riviera being seized six months later.

At the time, the Paris prosecutor’s office said the investigation was “focusing on the methods of acquiring real estate through the use of loans granted by private companies domiciled in Cyprus or the British Virgin Islands”.

As such, French newspaper Le Monde reported in October that searches were carried out “in both notarial offices and at the homes of the accused” both in France and in Monaco.

In total, the newspaper said, a 22.5-hectare estate in the commune of Grasse, on the French Riviera, as well as villas in nearby Saint-Raphael and Grimaud, and luxury cars, all of which belonged to Goryukhin and Opengeym, were all seized.

The case against them concerns the origin of the money they used to purchase the assets, all of which were bought between 2012 and 2014.

Le Monde wrote last year that the plots of land and villas “are held directly or indirectly by Monegasque companies, which are themselves financed by funds from several companies registered in the British Virgin Islands”.

It added that this structure effectively saw the businessmen lend themselves money to buy the property, with Goryukhin said to have been “linked to around a hundred offshore companies since the early 2000s”.

He reportedly used two “empty shell companies”, which went by the names of Kang Associates SA and Hatia Finance Ltd, as part of “a scheme relying on a total of four companies established in three tax havens – the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Monaco – to finance and acquire part of his estate in Grasse”.

The various large sums of money transferred between shell companies for property purchases are, according to the newspaper, of “unknown origin”.

In addition, it reported that “the deliberate sophistication of the means of concealment” is “symptomatic of alleged money laundering operations”.

Gorukhyin and Opengeym’s lawyers have denied all the allegations levelled against them.