US seizes billionaire Veskelberg’s yacht under Russia sanctions pressure

“Today marks our team’s first seizure of an asset owned by a sanctioned individual with close ties to the Russian regime. It will not be the last,” Garland said with Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in a written statement. Our international partners, we will do everything in our power to hold accountable anyone whose criminal actions enable the Russian government to continue its unjust war.”

Sanctions were imposed on Vekselberg and the company he founded, The Renova Group, in April 2018 by the Treasury after the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain that Western intelligence officials attributed to Russia.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vekselberg was subjected to new sanctions by the United States government on March 11 that named him after him; three family members of Putin’s spokesman; 12 members of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament; And 10 people are on the board of directors of VTB Bank, the second largest bank in Russia.

All assets of Vekselberg in the United States have been frozen, and American companies have been prohibited from doing business with him and his entities, whose holdings include minerals, mining, technology and other assets with a net worth of more than $6 billion, according to the Treasury Department.  Section, sections.

The booking note states that despite his status as a sanctioned individual, Vekselberg and his staff made payments in US dollars to support Tango, including during a December 2020 stay at a luxury water villa resort in the Maldives.

US investigators alleged that Vekselberg organized transactions to conceal his identity, including through the use of shell companies. Investigators cited three secret witnesses, including a director and employee of a company that provided services during the design and construction of the ship, and said that the Russian was the real owner.

Vekselberg is included in A March 16 Treasury List Among the 50 Russian elites the United States has made a top priority of a new multinational body hunting the assets of Kremlin supporters, the Task Force on Russian Elites, Agents, and Oligarchs (REPO) is called.

The task force is a key tool for the United States and more than half a dozen allies to locate and track where Russian oligarchs park their assets, a task complicated by the opaque or complex financial tools often used by the super-rich to hide their assets. Collectibles of public opinion.

The Treasury released 28 of the 50 names on the list — including Putin — but did not name the 22 others to avoid spoiling them.

US Justice of the Peace Zia M. Farocki in an order approving the arrest warrant, finding that US investigators did not need court approval to search the documents, “corruption is the financial and political lifeblood of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the slaughter of innocent civilians.” The electronics and other items on board the Tango. The judge described the seizure as “just the beginning of the reckoning that awaits those who facilitate Putin’s atrocities,” adding that it “reflects the message of the brave Ukrainian soldiers” who were said to have asked a Russian warship “to set out on your own.”

France, Italy and Spain have seized many billionaire boats in recent weeks, even as others have tracked down Russia’s wealthy anchor-weight Maldives, which does not have an extradition agreement with the United States, or appear stranded in European ports unable to buy fuel. .

France on March 2 seized a yacht whose main shareholder was Igor Sechin, head of the state-controlled Russian oil giant Rosneft, in a Mediterranean port near Marseille. On March 15 Spanish authorities detained another ship said to belong to Sechin, the 440-foot crescent, in Catalonia.

Spain also confiscated a $140 million 280-foot yacht registered to the daughter-in-law of Sergei Chemezov, a former KGB officer who heads the state-owned defense company Rostec and whose wife and daughter are on US sanctions lists.

Italy has reportedly confiscated at least three yachts – ships worth up to $580 million each – belonging to the sanctioned Russian steel, oil and coal business.

according to CBS NewsHowever, the satellite image shows a yacht said to be owned by Putin docked in a Russian port – and out of reach of any possible sanctions or confiscation.

The Justice Department said Monday’s seizure was coordinated by the interagency KleptoCapture task force responsible for sanctions, export restrictions and economic countermeasures targeting Russia that Garland announced on March 2. Punished individuals.

Born in western Ukraine in 1957 to a Jewish father who lost many relatives in the Holocaust, Vekselberg graduated from the Moscow Institute of Transportation Engineering in 1979 and has maintained close ties with Putin and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev since his rise to fortune. He also has ties to American interests, including a multi-million dollar home in New York City and a $5 million home in Weston, Conn.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vekselberg, formerly a researcher at a state-run laboratory, joined the rush to snatch parts of Russia’s privatized natural resources sector in the 1990s, eventually founding the Renova Group for oil and minerals. Based in Switzerland.

He became for a time Russia’s richest man in 2012, with an estimated fortune of $18 billion, after selling his controlling stake in an oil joint venture with British BP to Kremlin-controlled Rosneft. Medvedev appointed Vekselberg to head the state-funded Skolkovo Foundation for Technological Development, ostensibly Russia’s response to Silicon Valley, before he was convicted of the sanctions.

Vekselberg was among Russian businessmen close to the Kremlin whose contacts with Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign were investigated by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Michael Cohen, Vekselberg and Trump’s personal attorney met at Trump Tower in New York days before the 2017 opening with Andrew Intrater, Vekselberg’s cousin, New York investment director. Later that month, Cohen signed a lucrative consulting contract with the investment firm Intrater, Columbus Nova.

The US authorities describe Vekselberg as participating with government officials in diplomatic and soft power activities on behalf of the Kremlin, and was active in Russian cultural and charitable circles. He is said to have owned more Faberge eggs than anyone else, having bought nine of the jewel-encrusted treasures from the Forbes family for $900 million in 2004. The eggs’ return to Russia – once valuable to the Tsar and looted after the Bolshevik Revolution – is filmed as a patriotic gesture, with some later on display in the Kremlin and in St Petersburg.