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"Significant links with Russia": who owns the mysterious mega-yacht intercepted in Italy?

2022-05-07T15:19:05.971Z


The Italian authorities immobilized Friday, in Tuscany, a huge ship whose identity has not been revealed. The sp


140m long, the span of a multi-storey building... It's hard for the Scheherazade to go unnoticed.

This mega-yacht of abysmal value - 700 million dollars (

Editor

's note , 636 million euros) - necessarily caught the eye of the Italian authorities who intercepted it on Friday because of its "significant links with Russia" .

Still, a great mystery persists: the identity of its owner.

Is he a Russian minister?

A Russian oligarch?

Is he at least Russian?

So many questions that have not been answered by the Italian authorities, who have contented themselves with immobilizing the gigantic ship - two platforms for helicopters, a swimming pool, a cinema, six decks, royal cabins and an anti-drone battery - without say more about its owner.

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Their investigation nonetheless “established significant economic and business ties between the person who officially owns the vessel Scheherazade and prominent figures in the Russian government” as well as Russian figures sanctioned by the West following of the invasion of Ukraine, says a statement from the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.

"Putin's Yacht"

Following this investigation, “the Minister of Economy and Finance Daniele Franco signed a decree of immobilization” of the ship on Friday, adds the press release.

Time was running out: the ship, in dry dock - that is to say out of the water - for several months, hosted by a private company in the port of Marina di Carrara, seemed about to leave.

It was also relaunched on Friday, almost simultaneously with the publication of the decree.

With their eyes fixed on the port of Marina di Carrara, experts and amateur investigators are trying to unravel the mystery of the owner, with a favorite lead: what if the person concerned was none other than Vladimir Poutine?

The Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera also titled “

Putin's yacht

blocked in Italy” this weekend, taking care to use quotation marks as a precaution: nothing concretely allows us to establish this to date.

Nor is it possible to exclude it.

The track is however shared by the team of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who also attributes this sea monster to Vladimir Putin.

It is based in particular on a list of crewmen - 12 out of the 23 employees who work on the boat - who would be members of the FSO, the Russian federal service for the protection of personalities.

In March, two members of the Navalny team, Maria Pevchikh and Georgi Alburov, released a video detailing the fruit of their investigation.

“Number two on the yacht is called Sergey Grishin, listed in the telephone directories of several other people as Sergei G FSO,” they explain.

Another name, that of Anatoly Furtel, supports the Putin track: the man is domiciled at the address of the headquarters of the FSO office, in Sochi.

Finally, Evgheny Schvedov, security officer for the FSO in the Caucasus, is also part of the crew.

“Putin would have chosen Scheherazade after having sold the previous yacht, baptized Graceful, to the oligarch Gennadi Timchenko”, advances Il Corriere della Sera.

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False, however, retorts The Italian Sea Group, which took care of the maintenance of the ship in its yard.

"The ownership of Scheherazade cannot be attributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin," said the company in a press release, which said it relied on "the documentation in its possession and the results of checks carried out by the competent authorities".

Official ownership of the yacht goes to oligarch Eduard Khudaynatov, the former chairman of Rosneft, Russia's second largest oil company.

According to ANSA, Italy's main news agency, Italy has requested that Khudaynatov's name be added to the European Union's blacklist of Russian oligarchs since the start of the war in Ukraine.

A way to save time and not evacuate any track prematurely while waiting for the light to be shed.

Source: leparis

All news articles on 2022-05-07

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