A social media channel and website linked to Russian opposition figure and Kremlin-critic Alexei Navalny has claimed the Cayman-registered superyacht Scheherazade is linked to Vladimir Putin.
Navalny’s YouTube channel and website asserted that many crew members of the Scheherazade were, in fact, Russian military officers.
The New York Times previously reported that US intelligence officials believe that the $700 million yacht, which has been detained in a shipyard in Italy, could be connected to the Russian president.
On 22 March, Navalny was sentenced to another nine years in a “strict regime penal colony” over a fraud case that his supporters described as a sham and fabricated.
Russian security allegedly among crew members
A day earlier, the Navalny social media channels published a report that cross-referenced the names, home addresses and birth dates from a leaked list of the ship’s crew from December 2020, when the vessel arrived at Carrara in Italy.
The report, which the Compass could not independently verify, allegedly found that “many of the key people on the crew list” worked for the FSO, Russia’s Federal Security Service, which is responsible for the protection of the Russian president.
Some of the crew’s home addresses on the document matched the addresses of FSO installations, the investigators claimed.
Based on also-leaked flight records, the report noted the same crew members had travelled on rotating shifts from Moscow to Milan.
Almost of all of the permanent crew, except the ship’s captain Guy Bennett-Pearce, is Russian, according to the document.
The Scheherazade is officially owned by Bielor Asset Ltd in the Marshall Islands and the beneficial owner has never been publicly identified.
More than two weeks after the vessel was detained by Italian police, it has not been released.
The investigators also claimed that the Russia-registered yacht Graceful, which has been tied to Putin in the past, has been re-registered to Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko.
At least 10 vessels have been detained so far. The latest yacht to be seized is motoryacht Axioma, which is owned by Dmitry Pumpyansky, who is on the UK and EU sanctions lists. Authorities impounded the $75 million Malta-registered superyacht after it docked in Gibraltar.
First poisoned, then arrested
In 2020, Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent, widely attributed to a Russian military chemical weapons lab.
Further reading
After his life was saved in a hospital in Germany, he returned to Russia and was re-arrested for allegedly having broken the terms of a suspended sentence.
When he was sentenced again this week, Navalny was already serving three-and-a-half years in prison for breaking bail conditions while in hospital.
In the new trial, it was alleged Navalny had broken the law by establishing his Anti-Corruption Foundation, a group outlawed by Russia as extremist.
He was found guilty of fraud, for allegedly stealing $4.7 million in donations to the group, and contempt of court.
The foundation has produced several investigations online which led prosecutors to argue that it sought to topple “the foundations of the constitutional order” and encouraged crimes such as participation in unauthorised protests.
The foundation’s widely reported findings included evidence of a billion-dollar estate on the Black Sea, purportedly built in secret for the Russian president. This report was released a day after Navalny was re-arrested in January 2021.
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The Cayman Compass has drawn up a list of the 50 most prominent Russian-owned luxury vessels. More than 60%, 31 vessels, are listed by the Cayman Islands Shipping Registry.
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