Police in France have detained the Russian tycoon Alexey Kuzmichev and raided two of his properties in connection with alleged tax evasion, money laundering and sanctions violations.

The French financial prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that searches had taken place a day earlier at Kuzmichev’s Paris home and an estate in in the Mediterranean Var region.

Kuzmichev, one of the founders of Russia’s Alfa Bank, was sanctioned by the EU shortly after the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine for his “well-established ties to the Russian president”.

French customs agents last year seized the billionaire’s 26-metre (86ft) yacht La Petite Ourse, as part of the sanctions, a move that sparked a legal battle between authorities and Kuzmichev.

“My mother was Ukrainian, I have a huge number of relatives and friends there,” Kuzmichev told the Russian Forbes website last year, adding that he agreed with Fridman, who said that the conflict was a “tragedy” and that war “can never be the answer”.

“As far as I understand, he is a citizen of the Russian Federation so we should receive information about the detention through our diplomatic mission,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.

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