wladimir potanin yacht

The $300 million, 290 foot-long superyacht of Russia's wealthiest oligarch has been spotted docked in Dubai

• A superyacht linked to Russia's wealthiest oligarch was spotted in Dubai, AP News reported.
• Nirvana, owned by nickel tycoon Vladimir Potanin, is said to be worth $300 million.
• Potanin has not been sanctioned by the West, but has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A Russian oligarch thought to be the country's wealthiest man is the latest rich citizen to move a superyacht to the billionaire haven of Dubai amid scrutiny on those tied to Putin.

Associated Press journalists spotted the yacht Nirvana, which belongs to nickel tycoon Vladimir Potanin and is said to be worth $300 million, at Dubai's Port Rashid on Tuesday. 

Potanin, who is the CEO and majority shareholder of the world's largest producer of refined nickel, Nornickel, has been known to take vacations and play ice hockey with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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Despite his close ties to Putin, Potanin has not been listed on US, EU, or UK sanctions lists. 

Still, the oligarch is now one of several wealthy Russian individuals who have transferred major assets to Dubai.

The UAE has taken a neutral stance on the conflict in Ukraine and has not imposed sanctions on elite individuals with ties to Putin. By moving their yachts to Dubai , individuals are putting them beyond reach of sanctions from the west. 

Government officials in Dubai have told Western allies that sanctioned individuals are not allowed to do business in the country, The Financial Times previously reported.

Potanin's luxury vessel, Nirvana, now sits close to a $156 million superyacht belonging to billionaire Andrey Skoch, which was spotted in Dubai last Thursday, per AP.

A $300 million superyacht belonging to Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko was also spotted in the UAE earlier in June. 

The 290-foot Nirvana yacht has a six-person lift, a terrarium for exotic reptiles, and a 7.5 meter swimming pool, according to its manufacturer, Oceanco.

Potanin is the 33rd richest person in the world, with a net worth of $37.1 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 

Insider contacted Vladimir Potanin for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Watch: The rise and fall of Russian oligarchs

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NIRVANA Yacht – Exquisite $300M Superyacht

The $300 million superyacht was built by Oceanco, featuring a design from Sam Sorgiovanni and naval architecture from Azure Yacht Design & Naval Architecture.

The yacht was delivered in 2012 and continued to be a luxurious charter yacht on the water for guests to enjoy.

NIRVANA yacht interior

Sam Sorgiovanni designed the interior of the NIRVANA yacht. The award-winning yacht has accommodation for 12 guests in 6 cabins with one master, 1 VIP, and four double suites.

The master suite features amenities like a wraparound window and a private deck area.

The accommodation for 27 crew members creates a luxury experience for the guests onboard.

She features luxury design elements inspired by the earth and rainforest by using natural materials like teak, woven bronze, silk, and onyx.

There is a helicopter pad on the sun deck. A 7.5m swimming pool converts into a dance floor for partying all night and day on the yacht.

There are premium wellness facilities, including a massage room, steam room, sauna, and gym facilities. All of these are complemented by the on-deck jacuzzi.

The yacht is kids friendly with several safety features that make her a child-friendly vessel. The two vivariums that are forwards of the dining salon are another fascinating design element of the luxury NIRVANA.

The vivariums, or reptile tanks, are home to water dragons, neared lizards, turtles, frogs, and chameleons.

The bespoke entertainment areas set this yacht apart and provide the most luxurious experience on board.

The beach club is the perfect spot for guests to enjoy the superyacht lifestyle with a spacious area on the water level.

The fun on the yacht continues in the water with a garage that is filled with water toys and tenders. The water toys include aqua park inflatables, wave runners, and jet skis.

The NIRVANA yacht exterior features a design from Sam Sorgiovanni, with a deep dark blue hull that is slightly flared at the bow.

She features a downward curve aft of amidships and bright cap rails and transom, which gives her a classic look.

It was built by Oceanco with a steel hull and aluminum superstructure and was delivered in 2012. Her naval architecture was penned by Azure Yacht Design & Naval Architecture.

Specifications

The NIRVANA yacht is an 88.5m superyacht with a 14.2m beam and a 3.9m draft. The vessel features twin MTU engines, giving her a comfortable cruising speed of 16 knots and a top speed of 20 knots.

She has a 6800 nautical mile range when cruising at 14 knots. NIRVANA’s displacement weighs in at 2786 gross tons.

She was built to Lloyd’s Register and features advanced anchor stabilizers, which provide exceptional comfort levels while onboard. The yacht has a price tag of $300 million.

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As soon as he got sanctioned, Russia’s second-richest man hurriedly got his $300m superyacht to the safe waters of Dubai. The humungous vessel now dwarfs all boats in the emirate and marvels onlookers with its massive six decks.

[All images by Northrop and Johnson]

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Yacht of wealthiest Russian oligarch docked in haven Dubai

The Nirvana, a sleek 88-meter-long superyacht worth about $300 million, owned by Vladimir Potanin, head of the world’s largest refined nickel and palladium producer in Russia, is docked at Port Rashid terminal in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, June 28, 2022. Potanin, the man considered to be the wealthiest oligarch in Russia, joins a growing list of those transferring — or, sailing — their prized assets to Dubai as the West tightens its massive sanctions program. Potanin may not be sanctioned by the United States or Europe yet; such sanctions could roil metal markets and potentially disrupt supply chains, experts say. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The man considered to be the wealthiest oligarch in Russia, who has been photographed playing ice hockey with President Vladimir Putin, joins a growing list of those transferring — or, sailing — their prized assets to Dubai as the West tightens its massive sanctions program on Russia’s economy.

Vladimir Potanin, head of the world’s largest refined nickel and palladium producer, may not be sanctioned by the United States or Europe yet; such sanctions could roil metal markets and potentially disrupt supply chains, experts say. As the biggest shareholder in mining company Nornickel, Potanin had a personal fortune of $30.6 billion before the war on Ukraine, according to Forbes.

But like an increasing number of blacklisted Russian oligarchs, he has apparently taken the precaution of moving his $300 million superyacht to the safe haven of Dubai, in the U.S.-allied United Arab Emirates.

It is called the Nirvana, and the sleek 88-meter-long (289-foot-long) superyacht, equipped with a glass elevator, gym, hot tub, 3D cinema and two terrariums of exotic reptiles, stands out even in a port full of flashy, floating mansions.

The giant Dutch-built vessel with a navy blue hull was docked on Tuesday flying the flag of the Cayman Islands when Associated Press journalists observed the ship at Dubai’s Port Rashid — in the eyeshot of sanctioned Russian parliamentarian Andrei Skoch’s $156 million Madame Gu .

Representatives for Potanin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The arrival of Russian-owned luxury vessels in Dubai has become an outsized symbol of the UAE’s reluctance to oppose Moscow’s war on Ukraine and enforce Western sanctions. One of a shrinking number of countries where Russians can still fly directly, the financial center has become a thriving hub for Russia’s rich, in part because of its reputation for welcoming money from anywhere — both legitimate and shady .

“They haven’t tried to hide the fact they’re accepting oligarchs themselves and their yachts,” said Julia Friedlander, a former senior policy adviser for Europe in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. “When it comes to taking sides in the conflict, it’s not in their political interest to do so. They want to keep their access to money from around the world.”

The UAE Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Emirati stance has stoked tensions with the United States, which has sought to pressure its Gulf Arab ally to help combat Russian sanctions evasion. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, one of the main U.S. coordinators on the Russian sanctions strategy, visited the UAE last week to voice American concerns about Russian financial flows and demand increased vigilance.

Still, there’s no indication that President Joe Biden will impose secondary sanctions, leaving Washington with few pressure points.

As Moscow’s war on Ukraine grinds on, Western economic sanctions have proliferated in an effort to pressure Putin to change course. The European Union has captured billions of dollars in art, yachts and property. Britain, Fiji, Italy, Spain and other countries have impounded oligarchs’ yachts . The U.S. has seized vessels and aircraft.

Some prominent oligarchs, however, have escaped the blacklist because of their strategic holdings. Although Potanin has been hit with Canadian and Australian sanctions for his close ties to the Kremlin, his reputation as the “King of Nickel” has so far spared him.

“We’re reaching a critical metal shortage and we don’t know where those supply chains are headed, so you have to ask, would sanctioning him make things worse?” Friedlander said. “Those are serious considerations.”

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Meet the oligarchs: the Russian billionaires whose jets, yachts and mansions are now in the crosshairs

Some of Russia’s super rich are finding their assets in the west under threat of sanctions from the US

For a growing number of Russia’s richest and most powerful men, now would be a very bad time to take their private jets and superyachts to their mansions in the United States.

Yesterday, the White House announced it would expand the list of Russian oligarchs subject to full blocking sanctions – the highest level of restrictions – as it ramps up punishment against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Some of the newly named oligarchs overlapped with a list of Russian elites on whom the European Union imposed sanctions earlier this week, although there were some notable differences.

The federal government won’t just stop at freezing these targets’ assets, but will seize them, Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

In charge of appropriating these assets will be KleptoCapture , a newly announced justice department taskforce, with support from the treasury department, FBI, IRS and other federal agencies. Under US law, the justice department may use civil forfeiture to confiscate the proceeds from foreign crimes, including corruption, when they are found in the United States.

Their efforts will complement those of a transatlantic taskforce announced over the weekend between the United States, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Commission.

“We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains,” Biden said.

The Feds may have their work cut out. US regulations are lax when it comes to requiring disclosures of real estate transactions by foreign individuals, making the country a prime destination for Russian’s uber-rich looking to snap up prime properties without scrutiny.

Other favorite toys of oligarchs like planes and boats are commonly registered through shell companies. And many of those luxury craft have begun traveling toward extradition-free territories such as the Maldives, according to Bloomberg News .

Here’s an introduction to the Russian oligarchs now joining the US sanctions list – as well as a few others who haven’t been targeted yet, but have notable US ties.

Alisher Usmanov

Russians know Alisher Usmanov as one of Vladimir Putin’s “favorite” oligarchs. The country’s richest man until 2015, Usmanov owns a majority stake in Russia’s second-largest phone network, MegFon, and a large stake in the iron and steel giant Metalloinvest.

But few Americans know that Usmanov also helped give us Facebook. The billionaire began investing in the social network in 2009, when Zuckerberg’s firm was having trouble accessing funding in the wake of the financial crisis. Usmanov ultimately poured over $900m into the firm, owning as much as 10% of the company before selling his stake in 2014 and netting himself billions. He was also a major investor in Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga.

Usmanov was subjected to sanctions by the EU on Monday, and on Wednesday German authorities seized his $600m megayacht , the Dilbar – which boasts the world’s largest yacht-based indoor swimming pool. On 3 March he was among those added to the sanctions list by the US. The oligarch still has a $200m private Airbus A340.

The Rotenbergs

Long before brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg became two of Russia’s wealthiest tycoons, they were teenage Vladimir Putin’s judo training buddies, a role they continued into adulthood. Clearly they were good at it, because after Putin became president he rewarded the brothers with the control of large state-owned enterprises and lucrative contracts, netting them a massive fortune.

The Rotenbergs have since built a huge family empire of international investments under a web of shell companies, which has made Arkady’s son Igor a billionaire in his own right. Despite Arkady and Boris getting US sanctions after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, the brothers “continued actively participating in the US art market by purchasing over $18 million in art in the months following the imposition of sanctions”, according to a US Senate report . Rotenberg-linked shell companies continued making transactions in the US financial system worth over $91m long after the sanctions, according to the report.

In addition to Arkady and Boris, Igor and five additional family members were added to the US sanctions list this week.

Igor Shuvalov

Russia’s deputy prime minister from 2008 to 2018, Igor Shuvalov is now the chairman of VEB, the Russian development bank that finances major infrastructure projects, including the Sochi Olympics. He has claimed to be one of Russia’s cleanest officials, telling media he transferred all his wealth to Russia in 2013, and only kept it offshore before that to avoid spoiling his kids . But an investigation by the anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny found that Shuvalov, through a shell company, bought two London luxury apartments in 2014 for $11.4m and has used a secret private jet to fly his wife’s corgis around the world because, as one of his staffers explained, “it’s not that comfortable in business class”.

He won’t be able to fly his corgis as many places now that he’s on the US and EU’s sanctions lists.

Yevgeniy Prigozhin

Legend has it Yevgeniy Prigozhin began his rise to power selling hot dogs , shortly after getting released from prison for robbery. The wiener venture was apparently a smash hit, and within years he had opened high-end restaurants that counted Russia’s leader among their clientele, earning him the nickname of “Putin’s chef” and catapulting him into the inner circles of Russia’s elite.

Americans might be more familiar with another one of Prigozhin’s businesses: the Internet Research Agency, which employed a troll army that began by supporting Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, before turning its efforts to influencing the 2016 US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Prigozhin and the Internet Research Agency were indicted by a US grand jury in 2018 for interfering with the election, and he was added to an FBI wanted list in 2021.

He’s now on both the US and EU sanctions lists for running disinformation campaigns to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sergey Chemezov

A former KGB officer who befriended Vladimir Putin in the 1980s while living in the same apartment building, Sergey Chemezov rose through Russia’s public and private sector in Putin’s wake, and in 2007 was appointed as CEO of Russia’s state-owned defense giant Rostec, a position he still holds today. Chemezov was sanctioned by the US in 2014 amid Rostec’s role as a supplier for Russia’s invasion of Crimea, and Washington is targeting him again, now with his family members.

According to investigative reports and allegations from the jailed activist Alexei Navalny, Chemezov’s relatives have used shell companies to accumulate eye-watering assets , including superyachts and luxury villas around the world. But Chemezov says he’s clean, telling Russian media in 2019: “I do not accumulate wealth. I don’t stuff money in the corners. I don’t have yachts or airplanes.”

Nikolai Tokarev

Another former KGB officer who served alongside Putin and Chemezov, Nikolai Tokarev took over former Soviet state assets as Putin built his political power, and in 2007 became the head of the state-controlled oil giant Transneft. The oligarch has used his position at Transneft to build a business and real estate empire, which reportedly includes sponsoring an extremely fancy palace that’s said to be personally used by Putin. Tokarev was hit by US and EU sanctions this week.

Vladimir Potanin

Reportedly the second richest man in Russia, the banker, metals mining tycoon and former deputy prime minister Vladimir Potanin was among a small circle of oligarchs who met with Putin last week as the invasion of Ukraine began.

Potanin has played a big role in American arts: he has been a board member of New York’s Guggenheim Museum for two decades, until he stepped down on Wednesday. He has also given millions to the Kennedy Center in Washington, which carved his name into a wall. He is also known to have owned property in New York City , which came to light during a divorce fight that could cost him $7bn.

Potanin isn’t currently under US sanctions, which is good news for his three megayachts and two private jets (that we know about).

Leonid Mikhelson

Russia’s richest man in 2016, Leonid Mikhelson is the founder and chairman of natural gas producer Novatek, a close friend of Putin’s, and a business partner of Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire who has been under US sanctions since 2014.

Mikhelson loves art: along with his $200m art collection, he was on the board of trustees at New York’s New Museum from 2013 to 2017, and has sponsored exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and London’s Tate Modern. His ostentatious superyacht, the Pacific, can reportedly accommodate two helicopters.

But his other assets may be harder to trace. In 2017, the Panama Papers revealed that Mikhelson had used an intricate system of shell companies to secretly register a $65m Gulfstream private jet in the United States, which in most cases requires US citizenship or permanent residency.

The tycoon is not currently subject to sanctions, though his company Novatek is.

Petr Aven is the head of Alfa Group, a commercial bank subject to US sanctions that helped him amass an estimated $5.5bn fortune. A well-known collector of classical Russian paintings, Aven has lent works from his collection – reportedly worth $200m – to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Neue Galerie. Aven reportedly has never bought a plane or yacht, and told the FT “all my money goes in to art.” That is, of course, if you don’t count the millions he spent transforming an 8.5-acre plot in England into a “KGB-proof” mansion , complete with a bomb-proof panic room.

Last year, Aven filed a libel lawsuit against HarperCollins for a book it published about Vladimir Putin’s rise, Putin’s People.

Aven was sanctioned on Monday by the EU, which described him as “one of Vladimir Putin’s closest oligarchs” and one of “approximately 50 wealthy Russian businessmen who regularly meet with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin”. He has not yet been placed under sanctions by the US or UK.

Mikhail Fridman

Petr Aven’s business partner, Mikhail Fridman, is Alfa Group’s founder and a Ukrainian-born Russian oligarch. Fridman has made substantial investments in the United States, which include spending a reported $1bn in 2011 to buy up distressed properties across the east coast, telling the Wall Street Journal at the time, “The American market is the most well-regulated and liquid market in the world. It has the best protection for investor rights.”

Through Fridman’s investment group, LetterOne, the billionaire also sank $200m into Uber , and $50m into the telecom startup FreedomPop. Fridman also caused a stir in 2018 when he spoke alongside Aven at a closed-door dinner hosted by the Atlantic Council, a major US foreign policy thinktank, in what critics saw as an unofficial Kremlin mission to protest against US sanctions.

Last week, Fridman became one of the first oligarchs to speak out against the invasion of Ukraine, calling it a “tragedy” and writing that “war can never be the answer.” Nonetheless, Fridman was subjected to sanctions on Monday by the EU, which named him as “a top Russian financier and enabler of Putin’s inner circle”. Like Aven, he has not yet been placed under sanctions by the US or UK.

The oligarch has a son, Alexander, who is reportedly attending NYU’s Stern business school, after a stint in Moscow selling hookah .

Alexei Mordashov

Currently Russia’s richest man, Alexei Mordashov owns a third of Tui, Europe’s biggest tourism firm, and gained his billions as the chief executive of Russia’s largest steel and mining firm, Severstal. He is also a large shareholder of the Bank of Rossiya, which has opened up branches across Russia-occupied Ukrainian territory in recent years.

Over the last two decades, the billionaire has also poured money into the United States, investing heavily through Severstal in steel companies in the midwest before selling them for $2.3bn in 2014.

Mordashov has been hit with sanctions by the EU, but the US hasn’t taken action yet. They would be interested in his Bombardier Global 6000 private jet and multiple superyachts, including the $500m Nord, which Senator Bernie Sanders noted on Tuesday had been “sailing in the Seychelles region for more than 10 days” in a Twitter thread about Russian offshore wealth.

Roman Abramovich

Roman Abramovich, the longtime owner of Chelsea FC, has been described by a member of the UK parliament as a “ key enabler ” of Putin’s regime, which Abramovich has long denied. An orphan raised by his grandparents in Siberia, Abramovich pulled himself up by his bootstraps the old-fashioned way: wriggling into the inner circles of government and then profiting hugely by selling previously state-owned assets that he acquired after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The billionaire owns one of the world’s most outlandish yachts, complete with an onboard submarine and three helicopters. He has also owned a number of ultra-expensive properties in the United States, including a trio of buildings in New York City’s Upper East Side worth more than $90m combined, which he transferred to his third wife, Darya Zhukova, in 2018.

Abramovich is not currently under western sanctions. Earlier, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, told the House of Commons that Abramovich was “already facing sanctions” though later said he “misspoke”.

This article was amended on 7 March 2022 to clarify that Leonid Mikhelson was on the New Museum’s board from from 2013 to 2017

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Russian billionaires’ jets, superyachts roam free amid attack

For all the talk of sanctions on Russia and its elite, the status symbols of the billionaire class remain free to roam the skies and the seas.

Russia’s ultrarich are among the biggest owners of private jets and superyachts. So far, even as the U.S. and U.K. have ramped up sanctions on more than 100 Russian individuals and entities, these assets of the country’s elite — which can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars each — have avoided any direct hit. So too have their high-end real estate holdings.

One of the most high-profile status symbols in the U.K. is drawing attention lately: Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s ownership of the English football club Chelsea FC. It’s one of Europe’s most successful teams and is valued at $2.1 billion. Abramovich is not currently on the U.K.’s sanctions list.

As tensions in the region escalate, some U.K. lawmakers are pressing to widen the scope of those subject to harsh penalties for the invasion of Ukraine. 

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“Surely Mr. Abramovich should no longer be able to own a football club in this country,” Labour MP Chris Bryant said. “Surely we should be looking at seizing some of his assets, including his ($204 million) home.”

Russia’s richest lost $39 billion on Thursday alone, according to the Bloomberg wealth index.

Aircraft activity

Aircraft controlled by Abramovich, as well as planes belonging to oligarchs Dmitry Mazepin and Alexey Mordashov, landed in Moscow on Thursday, according to flight data website ADS-B Exchange. Abramovich’s Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner took off from an airport near Monaco, while Mazepin’s Gulfstream G650 flew from the New York area. Mordashov’s Bombardier Global 6000 traveled from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.

President Vladimir Putin had invited Russia’s business elite to a meeting Thursday at the Kremlin. Mazepin was there, as was Mordashov. So was Vladimir Potanin, Russia’s wealthiest person with a $26.1 billion fortune. 

The aircraft owned by Mordashov, Russia’s second-richest person with a net worth of $23 billion, then flew back to the Seychelles, the flight data show. Mordashov’s yacht Nord, completed in 2020 at an estimated cost of $500 million, has been sailing in the island nation for days.

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Billionaire comforts

Assets like planes or yachts could be targeted by a round of sanctions, according to Andrew Lohsen, a fellow in the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The challenge is they could be held through shell companies, complicating the ownership chain.

Imposing sanctions on Russian’s ultrarich “is important, but I recognize that it is complex,” said Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s former finance minister. “It takes time, but you have to take away their comforts.”

The U.K. took the additional step late Friday of banning all private Russian aircraft from the nation’s airspace. However, most of the billionaires have registered their jets in other jurisdictions, raising questions about the measure’s effectiveness.

Meanwhile, public backlash is mounting against Abramovich due to his Chelsea FC ownership. Sports investors and private equity firms, including some from the U.S., have began to draw up potential takeover offers for the football club in case sanctions force the Russian billionaire to sell, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

One of Abramovich’s yachts, the Solaris, is in Barcelona, while the other, the Eclipse, is in Saint Martin in the Caribbean.

Russian billionaires crave the legitimacy afforded from places frequented by high-net-worth individuals, such as New York, London and Singapore, said Raj Bhala, a professor at the University of Kansas Law School who specializes in international trade.

“To then be denied that access or to be shunned from those sorts of places does hurt them,” he said. “I wouldn’t underestimate that.”

Family risk

If the U.S. imposes sanctions on Russia’s ultrawealthy individuals, penalties could extend to family members as well, said Rachel Fiorill, a lawyer for Paul Weiss and former enforcement section chief at the Treasury Department.

A broadside against Russia’s billionaire class isn’t so simple for most countries. Neither is penalizing a head of state, though the U.S. plans to join the European Union and the U.K. in sanctioning Putin, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News on Friday, with the announcement of the symbolic step expected soon. 

Meanwhile, Putin is rolling out a domestic response to sanctions that will initially focus on assisting lenders hit with penalties, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News, which may soften any economic blow in the coming weeks.

Still, many of the Russian billionaires are enjoying global travels. At least four of their superyachts remained anchored in Barcelona. Two were last parked along the Florida coast, in Miami and Palm Beach.

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Yacht of wealthiest Russian oligarch docked in haven Dubai

The man considered to be the wealthiest oligarch in russia, who has been photographed playing ice hockey with president vladimir putin, has joined a growing list of those transferring — or, sailing — their prized assets to dubai, article bookmarked.

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The man considered to be the wealthiest oligarch in Russia, who has been photographed playing ice hockey with President Vladimir Putin , joins a growing list of those transferring — or, sailing — their prized assets to Dubai as the West tightens its massive sanctions program on Russia’s economy.

Vladimir Potanin , head of the world’s largest refined nickel and palladium producer, may not be sanctioned by the United States or Europe yet; such sanctions could roil metal markets and potentially disrupt supply chains, experts say. As the biggest shareholder in mining company Nornickel, Potanin had a personal fortune of $30.6 billion before the war on Ukraine, according to Forbes.

But like an increasing number of blacklisted Russian oligarchs, he has apparently taken the precaution of moving his $300 million superyacht to the safe haven of Dubai, in the U.S.-allied United Arab Emirates.

It is called the Nirvana, and the sleek 88-meter-long (289-foot-long) superyacht, equipped with a glass elevator, gym, hot tub, 3D cinema and two terrariums of exotic reptiles, stands out even in a port full of flashy, floating mansions.

The giant Dutch-built vessel with a navy blue hull was docked on Tuesday flying the flag of the Cayman Islands when Associated Press journalists observed the ship at Dubai’s Port Rashid — in the eyeshot of sanctioned Russian parliamentarian Andrei Skoch’s $156 million Madame Gu.

The arrival of Russian-owned luxury vessels in Dubai has become an outsized symbol of the UAE’s reluctance to oppose Moscow’s war on Ukraine and enforce Western sanctions. One of a shrinking number of countries where Russians can still fly directly, the financial center has become a thriving hub for Russia's rich, in part because of its reputation for welcoming money from anywhere — both legitimate and shady.

“They haven't tried to hide the fact they're accepting oligarchs themselves and their yachts,” said Julia Friedlander, a former senior policy adviser for Europe in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. “When it comes to taking sides in the conflict, it's not in their political interest to do so. They want to keep their access to money from around the world.”

The UAE Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Emirati stance has stoked tensions with the United States, which has sought to pressure its Gulf Arab ally to help combat Russian sanctions evasion. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, one of the main U.S. coordinators on the Russian sanctions strategy, visited the UAE last week to voice American concerns about Russian financial flows and demand increased vigilance.

Still, there's no indication that President Joe Biden will impose secondary sanctions, leaving Washington with few pressure points.

As Moscow’s war on Ukraine grinds on, Western economic sanctions have proliferated in an effort to pressure Putin to change course. The European Union has captured billions of dollars in art, yachts and property. Britain, Fiji, Italy, Spain and other countries have impounded oligarchs’ yachts. The U.S. has seized vessels and aircraft.

Some prominent oligarchs, however, have escaped the blacklist because of their strategic holdings. Although Potanin has been hit with Canadian and Australian sanctions for his close ties to the Kremlin, his reputation as the “King of Nickel” has so far spared him.

“We're reaching a critical metal shortage and we don't know where those supply chains are headed, so you have to ask, would sanctioning him make things worse?" Friedlander said. “Those are serious considerations.”

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Posterchild for Russia's removal of Ukraine orphans says he was coached, threatened

A teenage orphan who became a posterchild for Moscow's deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia said he was instructed by officials to recite pro-Russian talking points for television cameras and threatened with a beating when he complained about conditions.  

Why the U.S. put a $1 million bounty on a Russian yacht’s alleged manager

On Sept. 3, 2020, the staff of a $90 million yacht placed an order with a U.S. company for a set of luxury bathrobes that came to $2,624.35.

For roughly two years before that, according to federal prosecutors, the yacht’s management had been falsely claiming it was working for a boat named “Fanta.” But the luxury bathrobes came embroidered with a monogram that, prosecutors said, revealed the yacht’s true identity: “Tango.”

That was a problem, officials say in court papers, because Tango was owned by a Russian billionaire under U.S. sanctions, and doing business on his behalf violated federal law.

Late last month, U.S. authorities unveiled a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest and or conviction of the man they say was running the yacht staff and orchestrated the deception with the robes — Vladislav Osipov, 52, a Swiss-based businessman from Russia. In a new indictment , federal prosecutors say Osipov misled U.S. banks and companies into doing business with the Tango yacht despite the sanctions on the Russian owner, whom the Justice Department has identified as billionaire Viktor Vekselberg .

Osipov has denied the allegations. Osipov’s attorney has said that the government has failed to demonstrate that Vekselberg owned the yacht, and that its management was therefore not a sanctions violation.

The reward offer for Osipov reflects the latest stage in the evolution of the West’s broader financial war against Russia two years into the war in Ukraine, as the United States and its allies increasingly target intermediaries accused of enabling Russian oligarchs to circumvent sanctions.

Many Russians close to President Vladimir Putin have been under sanctions dating to 2014, when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and sent proxy forces into that country’s eastern Donbas region. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, President Biden vowed to deal a “crushing blow” with a barrage of new sanctions on financial institutions, industries, business executives and others tied to the Kremlin. But roughly two years later, Russia’s economy has proved surprisingly resilient after the nation poured tens of billions of dollars into ramping up its military industry. Moscow has also worked around the sanctions, finding new third parties to supply it with critical military and industrial hardware, as well as countries beyond Europe to buy its oil.

Now, the West is trying to increase the reach of its sanctions by digging deeper into Russian supply chains. Late last month, the Treasury Department announced more than 500 new sanctions targeting Russia , primarily on military and industrial suppliers. The Justice Department also announced charges against two U.S.-based “facilitators” of a Russian state banker who is under sanction, as well as the guilty plea of a dual national based in Atlanta who was accused of laundering $150 million through bank accounts and shell companies on behalf of Russian clients.

Prioritizing criminal charges against — and the arrests of — Western employees of Russia’s elites represents a new escalation of the U.S. financial war against Putin, experts say. One Moscow businessman, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said many influential Russians are concerned about the arrest of two associates of Andrey Kostin, the head of VTB, Russia’s second-biggest state bank. These associates, Vadim Wolfson and Gannon Bond, were charged with helping Kostin evade sanctions by maintaining a $12 million property in Aspen, Colo., for Kostin’s benefit while concealing his ownership. Kostin has said that the charges of sanctions evasion against him are “unfounded” and that he has not violated any laws . Bond has pleaded not guilty; Wolfson hasn’t made an initial court appearance yet.

Wolfson, also known as Vadim Belyaev, had been a Russian billionaire until the Russian government took over his bank in 2017. Bond, 49, is a U.S. citizen from Edgewater, N.J. For all Russians living abroad and working with people in Russia, the threat of criminal charges is a much more worrying prospect than the sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department last month against hundreds of individuals and entities, the businessman said, in part because sanctions are far easier to dodge than criminal charges.

“What you have seen through today’s public announcements are our efforts at really targeting the facilitators who possess the requisite skill set, access, connections that allow the Russian war machine [and] the Russian elites to continually have access to Western services and Western goods,” David Lim, co-director of the Justice Department’s KleptoCapture task force, which is tasked with enforcing U.S. sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, told reporters last month.

Thad McBride, an international trade partner at the law firm Bass Berry & Sims, said the crackdown on intermediaries reflected the natural evolution of the U.S. sanctions campaign in response to Russian adjustments.

“It seems to me they have gone through a comprehensive list of the oligarchs, and you can debate whether or not it’s had a meaningful impact on the Russian war effort,” McBride said. “Because they’re getting smarter about who’s who, they’re finding other people who play meaningful roles in these transactions, even though they’re not showing up in the headlines.”

The charges against Osipov related to his alleged management of the Tango yacht illustrate the mounting potential consequences for people in Europe and the United States who attempt to do business with Russians targeted by Western allies, as well as the opaque structures allegedly employed by those seeking to evade sanctions.

With a net worth estimated by Forbes in 2021 at $9 billion, Vekselberg, 66, has long drawn scrutiny from the West — and sought to safeguard his wealth. He made his initial fortune in aluminum and oil in Russia’s privatization of the 1990s and then expanded into industrial and financial assets in Europe, the United States and Africa, with Putin’s blessing. In addition to the yacht, federal prosecutors say, Vekselberg acquired $75 million worth of properties, including apartments on New York’s Park Avenue and an estate in the Long Island town of Southampton.

Vekselberg, who declined to comment for this article, has not been criminally charged by the Justice Department. In a 2019 interview with the Financial Times, he denounced the sanctions as arbitrary and harmful for international business, saying he had been targeted just because he was Russian and rich and knows Putin.

In April 2018, the Treasury Department under the Trump administration sanctioned Vekselberg and six other Russian oligarchs as part of broader financial penalties over the Kremlin’s invasion of Crimea, support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Vekselberg was also targeted for his work for the Kremlin as chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation, an attempt to create Russia’s version of the Silicon Valley — evidence that appeared to undermine the Russian businessman’s claims that he operated independently of the Kremlin.

But with Vekselberg’s payments monitored by U.S. banks, according to the federal indictment , Osipov used shell companies and intermediaries to avert the bite of sanctions. Vekselberg kept other major assets out of the reach of U.S. authorities by making use of the Treasury Department’s 50 percent ownership rule, which stipulates that it is illegal to transact with firms only if an owner under sanction controls more than 50 percent of the business.

For example, a month after Treasury imposed sanctions on Vekselberg in April 2018, his Renova Innovation Technologies sold its 48.5 percent stake in Swiss engineering giant Sulzer to Tiwel Holding AG, a group that is nevertheless still “beneficially owned” — meaning, owned in practice — by Vekselberg through Columbus Trust, a Cayman Islands trust, according to Sulzer’s corporate filing. Vekselberg’s longtime right-hand man at Renova, Alexei Moskov, replaced one of Vekselberg’s direct representatives on the board. Moskov told The Washington Post that he stepped down from all his executive positions at Renova Group in 2018 after U.S. sanctions were first imposed and from that moment ceased to be Vekselberg’s employee.

The attempts to circumvent the sanctions appear to have found some success in the U.S. legal system. Columbus Nova, a U.S.-based asset management fund controlling more than $100 million in assets in the U.S. financial and tech industry, is run by Vekselberg’s cousin, Andrew Intrater. The firm battled for more than two years to lift a freeze on Columbus Nova’s assets, imposed by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control because of the sanctions on Vekselberg, and won, reaching a settlement agreement with the Treasury Department. After renaming itself Sparrow Capital LLC, Columbus Nova successfully argued that Intrater — not Vekselberg — owns the fund. Intrater argued that the company was 100 percent owned by U.S. citizens and that no individual or entity under sanction held any interest in it. Intrater said Columbus Nova had earned fees for managing investment funds owned by Renova. He said he had repeatedly told Treasury he would not distribute any funds to Vekselberg.

Now Osipov, the alleged manager of Vekselberg’s $90 million yacht, is attempting a similar argument as U.S. authorities seek his arrest on charges of bank fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and violations of sanctions law.

The federal indictment states that the Tango was owned by a shell corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands that was in turn owned by several other companies. The Virgin Islands shell company, authorities say, was controlled by Osipov, who also served in senior roles for multiple companies controlled by Vekselberg. U.S. officials also say Vekselberg ultimately controlled the other companies that owned the Virgin Islands shell company.

According to the indictment, a Tango official instructed a boat management company in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, to use a false name for the yacht — “Fanta” — to disguise its true identity from U.S. financial institutions and firms, which try to avoid doing business with an entity or person under sanction.

Working at Osipov’s direction, according to the indictment, employees for Tango bought more than $8,000 worth of goods for the yacht that were unwittingly but illegally processed by U.S. firms and U.S. financial institutions, including navigation software, leather basket magazine holders provided by a bespoke silversmith, and web and computing services. The management company running Tango, run by Osipov, also paid invoices worth more than $180,000 to a U.S. internet service provider, federal prosecutors say.

The Tango was seized by the FBI and Spanish authorities in the Mediterranean not long after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and Osipov was first indicted last year. The owner of the Spanish yacht management company hired by Osipov, Richard Masters, 52, of Britain, was criminally charged last year by federal prosecutors with conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal sanctions law. A request for comment sent to Masters’ firm was not returned.

But in recent court documents, Osipov’s attorney argues that the yacht was not more than 50 percent owned by Vekselberg, and that the government hasn’t demonstrated it was. Barry J. Pollack, an attorney at Harris, St. Laurent and Wechsler, also says the government never warned Osipov of its novel and “unconstitutional” application of federal sanctions law.

“The government points to no precedent that supports its extraordinary interpretation and cites no authority that allows the traditional rules of statutory construction to be turned on their head,” Pollack wrote in a defense filing. The filing adds: “[Osipov] is not a fugitive because he did not engage in any of the allegedly criminal conduct while in the United States, has never resided in the United States, did not flee from the United States, and has not concealed himself.”

Still, the State Department’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program has said it will provide up to $1 million for information leading to Osipov’s arrest, warning that he may visit Herrliberg, Switzerland; Majorca, Spain; or Moscow.

The case demonstrates the extent of the U.S. commitment to tighten the screws on those seen as aiding Russian elites, even if they themselves are not closely tied to the Kremlin.

“When DOJ levels legal action against an individual or entity, they have quite a bit of evidence, especially because the threshold to press charges for money-laundering and sanctions evasion is so high,” said Kim Donovan, director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. “We’ve had quite a bit of experience targeting Russia directly, and what you’re starting to see is the U.S. go after the facilitators enabling sanctions evasion. That’s where the U.S. is focusing its efforts right now.”

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Putin’s Run for Gold

By Brett Forrest

A peacock pranced on the roof of Amshenski Dvor, a restaurant outside the town of Sochi, on Russia’s Black Sea coast. A couple of friends, Yaraslau Zauharodni and Konstantsiya Leschenko, had joined me for a dinner of grilled meat and sweet Caucasian wine. Yaraslau is the chief of the hockey competition for the Winter Olympics. Konstantsiya works for the Olympics, too, in information technology. I had met them both in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, a few years before. Stagnant Belarus is not a place of upward mobility. My friends had new energy now, working for the Olympics.

I had to confess a feeling of unease about what may lie in store for Sochi when the Winter Olympics begin, in February. The traffic may be terrible. The power may fail, as it has already done hundreds of times in the last year. There may not be enough snow. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay campaign may provoke street attacks, possibly riots. Islamic terrorists may do their worst. So much money has been siphoned into criminal and political enterprises during construction that some structures, badly designed and built, may themselves become a cause of disruption.

Click image to enlarge, Map by Jason Lee

Yaraslau and Konstantsiya were having none of it—to me, it looked as if they had bought into the Olympic ideal of international brotherhood. They were wearing cheery blue “Sochi 2014” Olympic gear. They were enjoying their surroundings. “We like Sochi,” Konstantsiya said. “ In Soviet times, it was the place to go for a holiday.” Indeed it was, since choices were limited. Sochi had been a seaside resort since the days of the czars, and before the 1990s its sanatoriums were reserved for the Soviet elite. Yaraslau reminded me of an old saying, a proverb from the gambling world: “If I had known what cards I was going to be dealt, I would be living in Sochi.” We laughed.

Sochi is about as far south as one can get in Russia. The city lies on the eastern side of the Black Sea, in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains, and sprawls along the coast. I think of it as Russia’s Key West, a place apart, though without the carefree appeal. If Russia typically conjures images of birch forests and snowdrifts, Sochi is a place of warm water and palm trees. To be sure, some aspects of the city resemble the Russia of imagination. The city’s moldering landmark hotel, the hulking Zhemchuzhina, or Pearl, is a creaky rat’s warren of rooms done in unrenovated Soviet style. The city itself is easygoing and tolerant; rival ethnic groups from the region’s demographic mixed salad get along without conflict. Yet human perfection is not a concept that comes readily to mind in Sochi’s cafés and hotels, which combine Moscow rates and the kind of service that does not inspire a return trip. In summer, the third-class cabins of overnight trains disgorge their human cargo, and bodies unsuited to skimpy Lycra crowd the beaches, which are made of stones.

Photographs: from left, by Alexei nikolsky/ria-Novosti/A.P. Images, Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images, Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images, from itar-TASS/Zuma Press, by yuri Kadobnov/A.P. Images, Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Still, under the influence of my friends, and maybe of the wine, I was beginning to see Sochi’s possibilities. Two fingers tapped my shoulder. Turning in my seat, I looked into a face streaked with grime. “You are from America?” the man asked. There were two others in his party, sitting conspiratorially at a neighboring table. The man extended a hand, which was dirty, and I shook it. “ I love America,” he said. His companion across the table said, “America is cool.” Here it was: an example of that irrepressible Olympic brotherhood. But then the man moved in close and whispered in my ear: “ They know me in all the jails in America.”

I didn’t ask for details, and I knew he wasn’t kidding. The Sochi Olympics have become a magnet for criminal elements drawn from all over, the kind of people whose reach extends even to the United States. Russia’s most powerful crime bosses have traditionally hailed from this very region, the northern Caucasus. Ded Khasan, long the acknowledged head of Russian organized crime, was an ethnic Kurd from Georgia. Khasan, whose real name was Aslan Usoyan, traced his criminal origins to the Soviet Union of the 1960s. With the help of political and police connections, the Khasan organization facilitated the Afghan heroin trade, laundered money abroad, and traded in stolen goods, eliminating rivals as necessary. Khasan oversaw his network—part of an international organized-crime presence that may number 300,000 soldiers—from adjoining Caucasian shashlik restaurants in Moscow, Stary Phaeton (the Old Phaeton) and Karetny Dvor (the Carriage House). Khasan knew Sochi well—he had survived an attempted hit there 16 years earlier, when a gunman aimed at him and missed.

The Olympics have poured money into Sochi, and organized crime has been there all along the way. When the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) awarded the 2014 Winter Olympics to Russia, on July 4, 2007, billions of dollars began moving to the North Caucasus. Khasan assigned one of his lieutenants, an Armenian named Alik Minalyan, to shake down construction firms that had won Olympic contracts. Khasan’s network also took a cut from labor agreements, real-estate transactions, and goods flowing through the seaport.

The only problem for Khasan was a fight-for-supremacy feud with a fellow Georgian, Tariel Oniani, known as Taro. In February 2009, Khasan’s man Alik was gunned down in Moscow—presumably on Taro’s orders. In July of that year, members of the two factions met on Taro’s yacht on the Moscow River, seeking to hammer out their differences. Tipped off, police went into action. Commandos in balaclavas descended from a helicopter onto the yacht’s roof. Authorities arrested 37 men in all. So much for the peace conference. In 2010, Eduard “the Carp” Kakosyan, Alik’s successor as head of Khasan’s Olympic racketeering business, was shot to death in central Sochi.

Khasan continued to operate from the two Moscow restaurants. One afternoon last January, as he entered Stary Phaeton, a sniper’s bullet hit him in the neck. Another struck him in the back. He was dead within minutes. It is widely assumed that Taro ordered the hit, though Khasan did not suffer from a lack of rivals. With Khasan out of the way, and control of Sochi loosened, a host of criminal networks have worked their way into the Olympic bazaar.

In the six and a half years since the I.O.C. awarded the 2014 Winter Olympics to Russia, the state has disbursed more than $50 billion to prepare Sochi and its surroundings for the Games. Most of that money is being paid directly from the federal budget to various contractors. Billions go through Olympstroy, the state Olympic construction authority, which has had four directors in six years. These will be the most expensive Olympic Games ever mounted. (The Games in Vancouver, site of the previous Winter Olympics, cost only $7 billion.) How much of Russia’s $50 billion has gone to fund Olympics-related activity and how much covers kickbacks, bribes, and shakedowns is anyone’s guess. Basic bookkeeping is not prioritized. A Moscow friend, a foreigner who has worked as a senior manager for several Olympics, says, “I have never seen a budget in Sochi.”

The path to Sochi’s successful bid started on a trip to Austria in 2002, when Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s most influential oligarchs, joined Russian president Vladimir Putin and Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel for an afternoon of skiing during a World Cup competition. Taking in their Alpine surroundings, Potanin and Putin asked themselves why Russia lacked a ski resort of Austrian quality. Potanin’s firm, Interros, hired Paul Mathews, an American who lives on the slopes of the Whistler resort, outside Vancouver, to look into the options. Mathews is one of the most respected winter-resort designers in the world, and he had scouted the North Caucasus before. The area is about the size of the Alps, with elevations to match, but its history of strife and economic depression has left it under-developed. Mathews focused on Krasnaya Polyana, a mountain village where a flank of the Caucasus rises steeply from the Mzymta River, 30 miles from the Black Sea coast. Potanin announced the start of construction on his ski resort, which would be called Rosa Khutor, or Rose Farm, at a Moscow press conference in 2005. By February 2007, I.O.C. representatives had arrived in Krasnaya Polyana on an inspection tour, and Mathews was prepping Russian Olympic authorities. “I told them it would be good if we picked up the garbage on the road from Sochi to Krasnaya Polyana,” Mathews says. “And it would be good if the road had a white line down the middle of it.”

Olympic venues are often spread across numerous towns hundreds of miles apart. Sochi will have just two sites. The skating competitions will play out in Adler, a coastal district south of central Sochi. The skiing events will take place in Krasnaya Polyana, on or near the Aibga Ridge of the northwestern Caucasus. Most of the venues have been ready for a year or more. But some, particularly the Olympic stadium, have experienced a series of setbacks that have left construction far behind schedule.

Sochi is a one-lane town with grave logistical challenges—an example of the I.O.C. making an “ interesting” choice under the cover of spreading its message, while currying political favor with a country that is not afraid to spend. Herein lies the meaning of these Olympics. In the Russian state’s continuing drive to prove a point—namely, that Russia is a player—it will attempt to demonstrate that mounting the Winter Olympics in a subtropical city is an impossibility that it can achieve. During the Putin years, Russia has been preoccupied with doing things “the Russian way,” whether the Russian way makes sense in a particular situation or not.

Beneath every modern Russian achievement lies a hidden story that may be more telling. In Sochi, the hidden story is about Putin, and about the small circle around him, who have profited handsomely from the construction. The winners are a tight group, with a history going back to early careers in St. Petersburg. Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev was once the C.E.O. of Gazprom, the world’s largest extractor of natural gas and Russia’s biggest company. In the 1990s, he and Alexey Miller, the current C.E.O. of Gazprom, worked in the St. Petersburg city administration, along with the young Vladimir Putin. In St. Petersburg, they met Boris and Arkady Rotenberg. The Rotenberg brothers once instructed Putin in Sambo, a martial art developed in the 1930s to aid Soviet infantrymen in close-quarters combat. The Rotenbergs made their first fortune in the gas-pipeline business, as Gazprom’s principal supplier. They also control the largest thermal-generation company in the world, a Moscow-based firm called TEK Mosenergo, a subsidiary of Gazprom. Mosenergo won the contract to build a new power plant in Adler, meant to feed the electricity needs of the Olympic skating venues. All told, Rotenberg-controlled companies have won Olympics-related contracts worth $7.4 billion. In the last two years, according to a report compiled by Russian political-opposition figures Boris Nemtsov and Leonid Martynyuk, the Rotenbergs’ personal fortune has increased by $2.5 billion.

The bus to Krasnaya Polyana wound through a craggy gorge and up into the clouds. Construction crews worked far below on a new rail line. When the clouds fell away, I could see the snowcapped peaks of the mountains looming far above. At the bobsled track in the town, Russian skeleton athletes trained on a run that produces speeds of up to 84 miles per hour. Farther up the valley, at the Laura ski resort, owned by Gazprom, several dozen military officers in camouflage fatigues emerged from a conference and filtered through the pro shop. Looking across the Mzymta River, I could see Potanin’s sprawling Rosa Khutor resort; should there be no snow at all during the Olympics, there are storage facilities at Rosa Khutor for 700,000 cubic meters of it.

I was unable to visit the ski jump, whose history has been troubled. A year ago, Vladimir Putin came to Sochi and inspected several projects that were running behind schedule. The ski jump came under particular scrutiny. Engineers had had to shift the jump’s placement several times, after it was discovered that initial sites were geologically unstable. Then a new road had to be built up into the mountains, at a cost of $200 million. Akhmed Bilalov, a vice president of the Russian Olympic Committee, was in charge of all this. Bilalov was also the president of Northern Caucasus Resorts, a state-owned company responsible for building tourist facilities in the region. Putin put on a show for the cameras, asking his assistants for the amount of the original budget: $40 million. When Putin’s lieutenants then informed him that the ski jump’s cost had reached $265 million, Putin arched his eyebrows. “Nice work,” he said. The following day, Bilalov was relieved of his duties, and he apparently fled the country. Northern Caucasus Resorts is now controlled by Sberbank, a state-owned financial institution. Sberbank’s chairman is German Gref, who, needless to say, had worked with Putin in the St. Petersburg city administration.

Demotions, Bilalov-style, are common in Russia, where the whimsy of power may undercut anyone’s standing, anytime. On the menu at the Platan Yuzhny Hotel, in Krasnodar, the administrative capital of the region that includes Sochi, there is an item called “Disgraced Oligarch Salad” (grilled scallops, with mixed lettuce and extra-virgin olive oil).

By Kase Wickman

By Kara Warner

The Sochi Internal Affairs department has conducted numerous investigations into Olympstroy and filed criminal complaints, alleging that the Olympic agency and its contractors operated a kickback scheme related to the construction of the Olympic stadium, the main hockey rink, and various other properties. The total in stolen funds, according to prosecutors, approaches $800 million. Not a single case related to Sochi development has made its way into court. There is speculation that, when the Olympics are over, the state will launch a series of court cases designed to transfer the ownership of several large construction companies to people close to the Kremlin. This type of state-sponsored theft is routine in Russia.

Sochi had bid for the Olympics twice before, in 1998 and 2002. These were not serious efforts, and they foundered on the fundamental challenge of creating a suitable transport link between the coastline and the mountains. There was an existing road, but it could not accommodate Olympic traffic. Paul Mathews remembers looking over some of the early bid plans. “ They had a gondola running for 50 miles across the sky,” he told me. “It looked like a child had drawn them.”

This time, taking the problem seriously, Russian officials devised a combined rail line and highway link to connect Adler and Krasnaya Polyana. It is a complex undertaking, requiring 45 bridges and 12 tunnels, along challenging mountain and river terrain. This would become the largest construction contract in Russian history—initially estimated at $2.85 billion and now pegged at $9.4 billion—a lot of money for a 30-mile road that in all likelihood will rarely be used once the Olympics are over. Naturally, Russian Railways, the state railroad monopoly, would lead the project. The president of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, had once been the first secretary of the Soviet Mission to the U.N. In 1991 he entered private business in St. Petersburg, where he bought a dacha next door to one owned by Putin, beginning a long association. Yakunin returned to government only when public life had proved itself to be a reliable path to wealth. There has been speculation that he will succeed Putin as Russian president.

Russian Railways is the second-longest railway network in the world, with announced assets of roughly $100 billion. This total could likely be much higher, as Russian Railways is a model of corruption and kickbacks, with company cash flowing to personal accounts offshore. When the decision was made to build the Adler-Krasnaya Polyana link, officials did not extend an open bid for general contractors. The work was given to two companies: Transyuzhstroy, a builder of railway facilities, and SK Most, which builds railroad bridges and tunnels. Transyuzhstroy’s founders include Oleg Toni, a Yakunin lieutenant and the vice president for construction of Russian Railways. Yakunin’s wife, Natalia, sits on the board of directors of a bank owned by the majority stakeholders of SK Most. Gennady Timchenko, another St. Petersburg ally of Putin’s and the co-founder of Gunvor, one of the world’s largest oil-trading firms, holds a 25 percent stake in SK Most. It doesn’t take an expert in construction to understand that haste or thrift, or both, were applied to the building of the new Krasnaya Polyana train station. Ceiling slats are too short to cover their allotted space. Whoever installed the floor tiles failed to measure before beginning the task.

Only Russians know how difficult it is to persist in Russia. If things get too difficult for the rest of us, we can simply leave. Once the Rosa Khutor resort was past the halfway mark, Vladimir Potanin realized that he needed an experienced professional to finish the job. In April 2007, he hired Roger McCarthy, the co-president of the mountain division at Vail Resorts. Some of McCarthy’s colleagues couldn’t understand why he was leaving his cushy position at Vail to work for the Russians. McCarthy had a ready answer. “I’d tell them, ‘Don’t forget who put the first man in space.’ And he went round and round. He didn’t just go up and come down.” (A portrait of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin hangs in the Russian Railways office in Krasnaya Polyana, as if to offer inspiration.) In 2008, McCarthy left Rosa Khutor. “The stuff I really wanted to do had been done,” he says. “The Russians did their own things inside the buildings—steep stairs with short treads and big risers—just dumb shit, things that were frustrating. So in the end, between family and the ease of working in North America, the choice wasn’t that tough.”

Even as construction began on the rail-highway link, builders broke ground on a private compound outside Moscow. The property was registered to a Cypriot company owned by one of Vladimir Yakunin’s sons. The compound, on 170 acres, includes three châteaux built of limestone imported from Germany, clad in Italian marble. A worker told Russian media that in one of the châteaux there was an immense refrigerator designed to store fur coats.

Vladimir Putin himself keeps two dachas in the Sochi region. One sits near Medvedev’s own dacha on the property of the Gazprom resort. To learn about his second dacha, I visited Trikoni, a restaurant situated along Krasnaya Polyana’s main artery, Protectors of the Caucasus Street. Trikoni is a locals’ hangout, existing long before any I.O.C. official ever mispronounced the name of this village as “Pollyanna.” I met a contact, whom I’ll call Roman, a builder who supplied labor for Putin’s second dacha. He told me that it is called Lunnaya Polyana, or Moon Field, a reference to the barren landscape upon which it sits. Lunnaya Polyana is located within Sochi National Park, which is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2004, Honka, a Finnish company that specializes in high-end wooden homes, supplied building materials for Putin’s dacha. (Honka declined to comment about the project.) It is protected by some of the 30,000 Spetsnaz special-forces troops that the Russian military has dispersed into the mountains, there to live in tents until the Olympics are over. Putin has built himself two massive chalets, two helipads, a power station, and two ski lifts, servicing surrounding peaks. According to UNESCO, the Russian state built a private dacha on a UNESCO site under the guise of conducting meteorological research.

The Spetsnaz forces were up in the mountains not just to protect Putin. Disrupting the Sochi Olympics is the stated goal of the Islamic insurgency that is headquartered just over the mountains, in the towns and villages of North Ossetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. The police are accustomed to the ways of organized crime—many of them are on its payroll, after all—but terrorism is the Olympic wild card. On the veranda of the Four Peaks Hotel restaurant, in Krasnaya Polyana, Igor Bogatov lit a cigarette, joining me for a conversation. Bogatov is a major in the body that handles Russia’s internal policing.

We discussed the events of February 18, 2011. A bomb exploded on a ski lift on Mount Elbrus, the tallest peak in Europe, located 150 miles southeast of Krasnaya Polyana, in Russia’s restive Kabardino-Balkaria region. Several cable cars fell to the ground. No one was hurt. But earlier that day a group of militants opened fire on a car of tourists, killing three people.

On September 9, 2013, a bomb exploded underneath the car of Dmitry Vishernev, first secretary of the Russian Embassy in Abkhazia, which borders Krasnaya Polyana. (In the course of the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, the region of Abkhazia broke away from Georgia, establishing a pseudo-sovereign entity recognized by Russia and only four other countries.) The bomb failed to do the job. An assailant approached the car. He shot Vishernev and his wife, Olga, killing them both—Vishernev died immediately, Olga a few days later. The Russian authorities will close the border to Abkhazia for the Olympics. They will restrict access to Sochi to cars carrying local plates. Russians do security well, and they do it all the way. But they are still worried. “There are too many new people around here,” Bogatov told me, crushing a cigarette under his boot.

As the Olympics approach, corporate sponsors are beginning to think twice. Executives at Marriott, which had planned to open three hotels on Olympic territory, stated in May that they were canceling the company’s involvement with Sochi. They were unsure whether the real-estate developments of which their hotels were a part would be finished in time for the Games. They also had to be concerned about the questionable post-Olympics market. Marriot remains in business there, but it won’t comment in any detail. Olympic organizers have arranged for several cruise ships to dock at Sochi’s port, should there be a shortage of hotel rooms. “The boats might be the best places to stay,” a luxury-tour operator told me in Moscow. “They will be staffed with Filipinos, and the service will be international-standard. You’ll step off the boat and have terrible service in Sochi.”

I joined the local press when Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev arrived to tour the new power plant in Adler. He was joined by Alexey Miller, the Gazprom C.E.O. During the four years he did Putin the favor of occupying the Russian presidency, Medvedev projected the demeanor of a man who longs for a party invitation that never arrives. Putin was the one who craved these Olympics—for their ability to rouse nationalist feeling, to signify his rule, and to demonstrate Russia’s ability to execute complex projects. Those closest to Putin craved the Olympics for reasons of gain. Ordinary Russians cannot be blamed for hoping that some profit might also come their way.

A plant worker had a question for the prime minister. “I am a mother of two children,” she said, “and I can’t find a place in a kindergarten. What should I do?” Medvedev blurted out a reply: “ We are on the way to resolving this problem.” A man from his retinue quickly stepped forward and whispered in his ear. Medvedev listened intently, attempting to maintain eye contact with his questioner. While he did this, a hockey puck skittered across an LCD screen behind him. The puck morphed into a turbine, which then powered a digitally rendered electrical station. Medvedev returned his attention to the power-plant worker, whose face was expectant. The aide had apparently supplied Medvedev with no data that could alleviate the woman’s concerns. The prime minister fell back on words that many Russians under Putin have heard all too often. “Please,” Medvedev told her. “Wait a little.”

Brett Forrest

By Charlotte Klein

By Erin Vanderhoof

By Bess Levin

By Eve Batey

Vladimir Putin 'is secret owner' of mega yacht docked in Italy which escaped sanctions

Russian President Vladimir Putin is said to be the secret owner of multi-million-pound mega yacht Scheherazade, which is docked in Italy, according to rival Alexei Navalny's team

• 20:30, 21 Mar 2022
• Updated 20:39, 21 Mar 2022

Vladimir Putin owns a gigantic 'royal' yacht worth over half a billion pounds docked in Italy and captained by a Brit, according to a political rival's team.

The investigation, by followers of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny - and allegedly aided by Western intelligence, suggests the Russian President owns the mysterious Scheherazade.

However, he's managed to escape EU personal sanctions brought about following his invasion of Ukraine , and so the mega vessel has not been confiscated, they claim.

It is docked in Marina di Carrara, on the west coast of Italy, and documents reportedly show it is crewed almost entirely by those within the Kremlin's secret services, the FSO and FSB.

The same team revealed Putin's £1billion Black Sea palace and say the hidden purchase of the yacht makes him the richest man in the world.

But the Russian people are said to be completely unaware of it.

The hulking vessel is 140 metres long and consists of six-deck floors - described as being like two apartment blocks on top of each other.

It boasts two helipads, a swimming pool, a spa complex, a beauty salon, huge living rooms and royal cabins.

A video detailing the team's claims comes as Navalny is due to be sentenced again tomorrow, which could see him put away for another 15 years.

In the footage, Georgy Alburov and Maria Pevchikh say despite Putin's apparent hatred of everything European, having claimed everyone "corrupted" by the West is a national traitor, he does dock his boat there.

His daughters also reportedly own property in France in the form of a castle on the Atlantic Ocean.

And Putin's ex-wife, Lyudmila, lives in French Biarritz, in a villa currently under renovation.

While his oligarchs Usmanov, Deripaska and Abramovich live in the West.

The Scheherazade is listed as the 13th largest yacht in the world, behind the Eclipse in third, and owned by Abramovich, and Dilbar, the yacht of the oligarch Usmanov.

But the owner of the former is officially unknown.

In order to 'prove' that Putin owns the palace in Gelendzhik, the rival team produced evidence showing the President's friends are paying for it, that it's registered to some anonymous persons and the FSO was engaged in its construction.

In a similar fashion, they say the owner of the yacht appears to be an offshore company from the Marshall Islands.

In digging deeper, trying to determine who was paying staff salaries, they found a crew list, compiled in the Italian port where the yacht is docked.

British captain Guy Bennett Pierce is at the top.

He was interviewed recently by the New York Times and confirmed the vessel does belong to a Russian but refused to say which one.

The list gives the name of each crew member, as well as other information, including date of birth and visa number.

All permanent employees of the yacht, except for the captain, are Russians, say the investigators.

The crew fly to Moscow on rotation shifts, with Milan being the nearest city to the yacht's wintering and maintenance location.

The team also claims the crew largely work for the FSO, the Federal Protective Service, the agency that protects Putin and organises his life.

Second on the list is the chief officer or second mate, Sergei Grishin.

He is recorded in contact lists as Sergei G FSO.

Next is boatswain Anatoly Furtel.

According to the leaked databases, he is registered at Furmanova St., 10 in Sochi - the same place the Protection Service in the Caucasus of the Federal Protective Service of Russia (SOK FSO) is located.

It's the division of the FSO that takes care of Putin in the Bocharov Ruchey residence, one of his favourites where he spends much of his time and often entertains guests.

Under Furtel is Alexander Pechurkin, listed as boatswain's mate.

He is recorded in the contact lists as Sanya FSB, Guard Bocharov Ruchey, Alexander FSO and Alexander Graceful Procurement.

Graceful is Putin's previous yacht worth over £70million.

After the purchase of Scheherazade, Graceful was re-registered to Putin's friend Gennady Timchenko, investigators claim.

Under Pechurkin is Evgeny Shvedov, the landing hand.

He is registered at the same address as the FSO in Sochi where he holds the role of security officer within the military unit 38974.

Next is Alexander Khristoforov, sailor-carpenter, also an FSO employee registered at Furmanova Street.

Under him is deck dive Sergei Brikalov.

In the contact lists, he appears under the description FSO Sergei Brikalov.

Apparently, he is a diver and is responsible for the underwater part of the yacht.

Next are three security deckhands, all registered FSO officers.

Alexander Yasko indicated that same military unit of the FSO in Sochi as the place of work.

Vitaly Belenko appears in other people's contact lists as Vitaly FSO, Vitaly FSB, Vitalya Yacht and VVP.

The same Belenko indicated his place of work in his credit history as SOK FSO.

And the third guard is Sergei Koblev.

He's registered in the military unit of the FSO, works in the FSO and appears in contact lists as FSO Koblev Sergei and Seryi Bocharka.

Bocharka is the nickname of Putin's residence Bocharov Ruchei.

There is another employee, Roman Vlasov, but he doesn't work for the FSO.

He is a steward, but a more precise specialisation can be established by his work history and contact lists.

In 2018 and 2019, he worked in the Krasnodar Krai as a bartender, and in the contact lists he is listed as a "hookah man".

Alburov and Pevchikh say: "In total, just on the first two sheets of the crew list, we see 23 people, of which almost half are related to the FSO.

"I can't think of better proof that this yacht belongs to Putin.

"Even in Italy, thousands of miles from Moscow, people who are officially listed as Putin's security guards and personal staff work on it.

"The same people who take care of Putin in his residences and on his trips, who manage his life, fly together to Italy to work on one of the most expensive yachts in the world."

The yacht is said to house a cryosauna, which the President also has at every one of his other residences.

On the upper deck, there is a giant living room, dining room, two VIP cabins and a mechanical piano, which, as a crew member reportedly told the team, plays itself.

The tune is said to be from a famous 2014 song titled ' Vladimir Putin is a Fine Fellow'.

Alburov and Pevchikh go on to say: "If you closely follow our and other investigations about Putin, then surely know Putin's main rule - to steal, but not to register anything to himself.

"Therefore, Putin has surrounded himself with a dozen of the most trusted people who keep his billions."

They are said to include the famous cellist Roldugin, his daughter's godfather, who manages Putin's offshore companies.

Mikhail Shelomov, the son of Putin's cousin, holds Putin's shares in Gazprom and Sogaz and manages his palace.

The President's Gelendzhik vineyards are registered to his classmate Nikolai Yegorov.

Putin's childhood friend, Pyotr Kolbin, held Putin's stake in Gunvor, a large oil trader, the rest of which was owned by another Putin friend, Timchenko.

Rotenberg now owns the palace in Gelendzhik.

Alburov and Pevchikh say: "We are sure that in the case of Scheherazade, it will turn out that the offshore company hidden on the distant islands is also registered to another Putin friend.

"But what really matters is that the real owner of Scheherazade is guarded by the FSO.

"A state department, a security service, Russian civil servants and military officers.

"For some reason, they fly to Italy and work on a yacht.

"This hypocrisy is the quintessence of Putin."

They add: "He has lost touch with reality so much that he not only buys his third yacht worth more than the annual budget of the Kaluga Oblast but also sends military personnel from the Federal Protective Service to this crazy yacht.

"We demand the immediate arrest and confiscation of the Scheherazade yacht.

"We demand the disclosure of documents - who, when and how paid for the construction, decoration and maintenance of this ship.

"Because they paid with our money.

"Money was stolen from Russian pensioners. Money stolen from teachers and doctors.

"Money stolen from soldiers, who get deceived into dying and killing at the war in Ukraine that only Putin needs.

"Scheherazade is literally made from unbuilt Russian hospitals , collapsing schools, parents dying before the retirement age.

"Putin promised to explore deep space, develop Russian industry and build a strong innovative economy, but built himself Scheherazade instead."

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