“Today marks the first seizure by our task force of an asset belonging to a sanctioned person with close ties to the Russian regime. “It’s not going to be the last,” Garland said in a written statement to Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray. “Together with our international partners, we will do everything possible to hold accountable any individual whose criminal acts allow 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 Ministry of Finance after the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain that Western intelligence officials have attributed to Russia. The story goes on under the ad After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Wexelberg was hit with new sentences imposed by the US government on March 11, which names him. three members of the family of Putin’s spokesman. 12 members of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. and 10 people on the board of VTB Bank, the second largest lender in Russia. All of Vekselberg’s assets in the United States have been frozen and US companies are not allowed to trade with him and his entities, whose holdings include metals, mining, technology and other assets with a net worth of more than $ 6 billion, according to with the Ministry of Finance. Department. The warrant states that despite his status as a sanctioned person, Wexelberg and those who worked for him made payments in US dollars to support Tango and his owner, including his stay in December 2020 at a luxury seaside resort. in the Maldives. The story goes on under the ad U.S.A. researchers have linked the Vekselberg to the Tango through a series of multilevel transactions, shell companies and confidential witness statements, including a director and employee of a company that provided services during the design and construction of the boat. was the real owner and a US-based satellite repair provider, who said large yachts like the Tango are served almost exclusively by a single Spanish company, such as during the ship’s halt in the Maldives in 2020. Wexelberg was also included in a March 16 Treasury Department list of 50 Russian elites that the United States considered a top priority for a new multinational Kremlin’s pro-asset hunt called the Russian Elites, Proxs and Proxies. . The task force is a key tool for the United States and more than half of its allies in locating and tracking where Russian oligarchs’s assets are located. farms by the public. “In a moral war on both sides, seeing Russian oligarchs’ yachts confiscated and sold at auction – seeing the police in their villas, in their luxury apartments – will give Ukrainians and Russians who “They hate Putin a huge push,” said spokesman Tom Malinowski. (DN.J.) said last month. “This is one of the ways in which we can weaken the support structure of this regime. “The more we can make sanctions feel like a campaign of shock and awe, the better.” The story goes on under the ad The Treasury Department released 28 of the 50 names on the list – including Putin – but did not name the other 22 to avoid giving them information. France, Italy and Spain have seized many billionaire boats in recent weeks, although others found in Russia’s richest people have been anchored in the Maldives, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, or appears to have been excluded in European ports that can not buy fuel. On March 2, France seized a yacht whose main shareholder was Igor Sechin, head of the Russian state oil giant Rosneft, in a Mediterranean port near Marseille. On March 15, Spanish authorities seized another boat allegedly owned by Sechin, the 440-foot Crescent, in Catalonia. The story goes on under the ad Spain also seized a $ 140 million, 280-foot yacht, which was registered in the step-daughter of Sergei Tsemezov, a former KGB officer who leads the Rostec state defense group and whose wife and step-daughter US sanctions lists. Italy has reportedly seized at least three yachts – ships worth up to $ 580 million each – belonging to Russian steel, oil and coal tycoons under sanctions. According to CBS News, however, a satellite image shows a yacht said to belong to Putin docked in a Russian port – and away from any possible sanctions or seizures. The Justice Department said Monday’s seizure was coordinated by an inter-service KleptoCapture task force responsible for sanctions, export restrictions and economic countermeasures aimed at Russia, which Garland announced on March 2. persons under sanctions. The story goes on under the ad Born in western Ukraine in 1957 to a Jewish father who lost several relatives in the Holocaust, Vekselberg graduated from the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers in 1979 and has close ties to Putin and former Russian President Dmitry Dmitry . It also has ties to US interests, including a multi-million dollar multi-million dollar house in New York and a $ 5 million house in Weston-Con. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vekselberg, once a researcher in a state-owned laboratory, rushed to seize parts of Russia’s privatized natural resources sector in the 1990s, eventually founding the Renova Group, an oil and metal group based in Switzerland. He became Russia’s richest man for a while in 2012, with an estimated fortune of $ 18 billion, after selling his controlling stake in an oil joint venture with British BP to the Kremlin-controlled Rosneft. Medvedev appointed Vekselberg president of the state-funded technology institute Skolkovo, ostensibly in response to Russia in the Silicon Valley, before imposing sanctions. The story goes on under the ad Vekselberg was among Russian business executives near the Kremlin whose contacts with Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign were investigated by Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III. Wexelberg and Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen met at the Trump Tower in New York a few days before the 2017 inauguration with Wexelberg’s cousin, Andrew Intrater, director of investment in New York. Later that month, Cohen signed a lucrative consulting firm with Intrater’s investment firm, Columbus Nova. U.S. officials say Wexelberg was involved with government officials in diplomacy and soft power activities on behalf of the Kremlin, and was active in Russian cultural and philanthropic circles. He is said to have owned more Fabergé eggs than anyone else, buying nine of the Forbes family’s treasures for $ 900 million in 2004. The return to Russia of eggs – once the tsar’s most valuable property and looted after the Bolshevik revolution – was seen as patriotic. gesture, with some of them later on display in the Kremlin and St. Petersburg.
