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Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) and Vladimir Putin (right) know each other very well (archive photo from 2010)
Photo: Alexei Druzhinin / AP
The US is urging Germany to seize a private jet of Putin's confidante Yevgeny Prigozhin, stationed in Berlin.
"Zeit" reports this in advance.
The federal government has so far rejected a seizure.
And Prigozhin himself claims that the plane does not belong to him at all.
According to "Zeit", US diplomats sent the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Economics a dossier with details about an aircraft at the end of last year, which is attributed to Prigozhin.
It is a machine that has been stationed at Berlin-Brandenburg Airport for maintenance work since the end of October 2020.
According to the dossier, the plane in San Marino is registered with a company called the Club Group.
It should be a front company.
Prigozhin, who was accused in the absence of US special investigator Robert Mueller in 2018 for his alleged involvement in the attempted influence in the US election campaign in 2016, is on several sanction lists from the US and the European Union.
Since then, he has no longer been allowed to own any assets in the EU.
Prigozhin speaks of "unscrupulous German authorities"
According to the report, the federal government has so far rejected a seizure under sanctions law with reference to the opaque ownership of the jet.
As a compromise, the ministries entrusted with the process agreed to initiate a customs procedure first.
As long as this is running, it is not possible for Prigozhin to use the machine.
Prigozhin told Die Zeit that the "unscrupulous German authorities" obviously wanted to steal the plane from its owner and attribute it to him, Prigozhin.
He felt sorry for the actual owner.
The Putin confidante left open who owns the machine.
59-year-old Prigozhin is known as "Putin's cook" because his catering company Concord cooked for the Kremlin.
The businessman also financed the "Wagner" group, among other things.
This is the unofficial name of a notorious mercenary force that is active in Syria, Libya and other African countries, among others.
Apparently the soldiers of the group are currently in Mali.
According to the French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, the Russian mercenary company is not in the fight against terrorism in Mali, but to strengthen the current rulers.
"Wagner is there to support the junta, but suggests that they are fighting terrorism," said Le Drian on Wednesday night in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly in Paris.
Mali has seen three military coups since 2012 and is considered politically extremely unstable.
Since the most recent coup last May, the country has been led by a military transitional government.
Islamist terror groups have been troubling the crisis state for years.
svs / dpa
