Rabbi said detained in inquiry into how Roman Abramovich got Portuguese citizenship
Portugal has launched Investigation on how Russian Jewish Oligarchy, Roman Abramovich secured citizen of the country.
Already , top rabbi in Portugal’s second-largest city has been detained amid an inquiry into how Roman Abramovich, the Russian Jewish oligarch sanctioned this week in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, obtained Portuguese citizenship last year.
Rabbi Daniel Litvak of the Jewish Community of Porto, an organization representing Jews in that city, was arrested Thursday as he was preparing to depart for Israel, according to the Portuguese news organization Publico.
Multiple Portuguese agencies have been investigating whether Abramovich’s citizenship was properly awarded under Portugal’s 2013 law allowing naturalization for descendants of Sephardic Jews. The law represented an attempt to atone for the Inquisition, a campaign of religious persecution in Spain and Portugal in the 16th century that forced tens of thousands of Jews to emigrate, hide their Jewish identity or denounce it altogether.
The government delegated the task of vetting applications for citizenship to two groups, the Jewish Community of Lisbon and Litvak’s organization in Porto. Tens of thousands of applicants have become Portuguese citizens under the law, which helped turn Porto into a Jewish destination.
Abramovich’s citizenship — which gave him a European Union passport for the first time — raised questions because most Russian Jews are Ashkenazi and do not have Sephardic roots. But Litvak said in January that he was certain an investigation would show that his organization had assessed Abramovich’s application as it would anyone else’s.
The Jewish Community of Porto did not immediately reply to a query by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about Litvak’s detainment.