Quote from Timothy Fitzpatrick on March 3, 2022, 19:53

 

In the photo: Vladimir Putin

Source: BBC

2-03-2022, 13:38

Two weeks before the war in Ukraine, the luxury yacht Graceful hurriedly left Hamburg for Kaliningrad, perhaps because of the threat of sanctions. Previously, it was called "Putin's yacht" without much evidence. The editors found its owner in an array of documents from "Putin's palace."

Yacht Graceful

On February 7, the publication Bild reported : the so-called "Putin's yacht" left the shipyard of the city of Hamburg. "Obviously, it was an escape for fear of arrest!" the tabloid wrote, referring to possible sanctions in response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine.

At that time, only the American media reported about a possible invasion, and the Russian authorities replied that all this was insinuations, and the troops had gathered on the border for exercises.

What is known about the yacht

"Putin's yacht" is usually called an 82-meter comfortable ocean-type pleasure vessel, which was started to be built at Sevmash in Severodvinsk and finished in Germany. The yacht was launched in 2014 and was named Graceful - that is, "Graceful", or "Graceful", in English. It has a swimming pool, helipad, two floors of suites, guest cabins and living rooms. The possible cost was estimated at $100 million .

Media "Factor" publishes a detailed description of Putin's precious vessel. According to the publication, this yacht was presented to the President of the Russian Federation by oligarch Roman Abramovich.

The customer for the construction was a company from the Bahamas, and the operator after launching was the Cypriot "daughter" of the state-owned Sovcomflot. Western media and specialized portals called the ship "Putin's yacht" on the basis of several circumstantial facts that are clearly insufficient to tie her to the Russian president: for example, they drew attention to the fact that she was built at the defense Sevmash, which actually specializes in submarines.

“I would be happy to know for whom Sevmash built this yacht. Only the representative of the customer dealt with us, and we don’t know who the customer is,” the representative of Sevmash answered questions from the media.

And then the yacht was often noticed in Sochi, where the Russian president and his entourage like to relax: she is even on the list of ships that the local port provides agency services to. In 2018, the Russian publication Sobesednik analyzed the data on the movements of the yacht and found matches: on September 15, 2016, Vladimir Putin went to Kerch for a meeting of the Presidium of the State Council, and the yacht also went there from Sochi. Nevertheless, this is not enough to link her even with reservations to the President of Russia.

On the specialized yacht websites they write that the “Graceful” is smaller in size (82 meters) than some megayachts, but in “luxury it is not inferior to them”. It has an indoor pool, which after certain operations can be converted into a dance floor; owner's apartment on two floors, two VIP cabins and three comfortable guest cabins. One of the main advantages is a unique helipad on the upper deck, which allows you to comfortably arrive on the yacht.
"Sobesednik" studied the routes of Graceful and found additional arguments in favor of the fact that Putin can swim on it. The dates of the ship's sailing coincide with the president's schedule. Maps from VesselFinder, a civilian ship tracking website, show that the Graceful is constantly running between Russia and Spain. On May 23, 2017, the yacht was spotted off Sochi. The site Fleetphoto, where users post their photos of ships, even has a picture of Graceful standing in the bay.
As of March 14, the yacht was in the port of Barcelona. Surrounded by several other boats in the immediate vicinity: Ona, Titan and Symphony. One of them is owned by Roman Abramovich and Louis Vuitton Group President Bernard Arnault .
The owner of Graceful has signed a confidentiality agreement with Blohm + Voss. However, according to the website Fleetphoto, the owner of the vessel is a company from the Bahamas.
A company called O'Neil, which appears as the owner of the Graceful yacht, was registered in the Bahamian jurisdiction in November 2003. True, O'Neil's status is no longer active.

However, thanks to the story of the sailing of the ship against the backdrop of aggravated relations between Russia and the West, the media again drew attention to it - and this revealed the owner of the ship.

What company is the yacht registered to?

In the autumn of 2021, Graceful arrived in Hamburg at the Blohm and Voss shipyard for modernization - in particular, work was planned to be carried out in the bow and above deck.

However, in early February, the yacht left Hamburg - without waiting for the completion of all work.

“According to the plan, they were supposed to be completed no earlier than April,” a source who was involved in the repair told the BBC.

“It is clear that the instruction to immediately leave the shipyard came from the owner, ” says a witness of the yacht’s departure. According to him, the end of the repair was generally scheduled for the end of May.

A few days later, she was photographed at the entrance to the Kaliningrad Bay, where she is now, follows from the data of the Marinetraffic website, which tracks the movement of ships.

The Graceful yacht enters the port of Baltiysk (12.02.2022)

Thanks to this, it is now possible to find out who exactly owns the yacht, which was registered offshore from the Bahamas at the construction stage. According to information on the website of the Baltic Sea Ports Administration, its owner is a certain Argument JSC.

The Telegram channel "We Can Explain" found the same information about the owner of the yacht in the base of the ship stations of the UN International Telecommunication Union: all ships that use the system of the global maritime distress communication system send data there.

There are three companies in Russia with this name and this form of ownership. Two - Moscow - without traces of vigorous activity. The third, from Gelendzhik, is directly related to the project of the so-called "Putin's Palace": a luxurious complex near the village of Praskoveevka near Gelendzhik, which was built in secret, ostensibly for the president of Russia.

In January 2021, Alexei Navalny's team released a large investigation dedicated to "Putin's palace". “Nothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives and has never belonged,” the president himself commented on the investigation at the time.

In May 2021, the editors confirmed many of Navalny's conclusions thanks to the array of documents that the editors had at their disposal. These are certificates and official documents that were prepared by employees of a Moscow company hired to service the construction of the palace and several related facilities.

In particular, the array contains documents with signatures and seals for the sale of the palace: from  Nikolai Shamalov , an old acquaintance of Vladimir Putin from the Ozero cooperative, to the structures of the co-owner of the Sheremetyevo airport Alexander Ponomarenko , who on February 28, 2022 was included in the EU sanctions list including for financing the construction of "Putin's palace".

There are also documents of JSC "Argument" in the array - for example, scans of a tax return with a seal, an order to appoint a director, as well as an agreement on a loan from one of the management companies of "Putin's palace". All documents are from the late 2000s - early 2010s.

The first page of the tax declaration LLC "Argument"

Agreement on granting a loan to LLC "Argument" for 2 million 603 thousand rubles. one of the management companies of "Putin's Palace"

"Argument" still leases from the state a forest area of ​​almost 16 hectares between the "Putin's palace" near Praskoveevka and the vineyards in Divnomorskoye, which were part of the same network of objects with the palace. What exactly was planned to be built here is not entirely clear: in the array, the "Argument" documents are in the "didn't work" folder. "Some vineyards, probably," suggested a BBC interlocutor who was involved in the project in those years.

The founders of "Argument" were: Oleg Kuznetsov - the former head of the FSO structure, which was the customer-developer of the project for the construction of "Putin's palace", Alexander Kolpakov - first the head of the department "B" of the FSO, which is engaged in the construction and management of the presidential residences, and now the head Office of the President.

The "Argument" did not answer the calls of the editors.

Why was the yacht taken away in such a hurry

Two weeks after the yacht entered the Kaliningrad Bay, Vladimir Putin started a war with Ukraine.

Those who made this decision could well have been afraid of sanctions, which were then only hypothetically discussed, notes Ilya Shumanov, Deputy Director General of Transparency International.

“Since these companies and names appeared in Navalny’s investigation , then the yacht is most likely related to the person who was the user and objects (from the investigation ) - and this, presumably, is the president of the Russian Federation. Thus, taking into account the circumstances of the redeployment of the yacht, it can be assumed that the owners of this yacht are either included in the inner circle of the president, or in the circle of people who made the decision on the military operation. And there were obviously a limited number of such."

Trainers on the upper deck of Graceful

In one of the photos of the interiors of the Graceful yacht, you can see that there are exercise equipment on the upper deck so that the owner can exercise while admiring the sea and the sun.

On October 8, 2021, the Russian authorities entered the BBC correspondent Andrey Zakharov into the register of media outlets acting as a foreign agent. On January 17, 2022, this status was suspended by a court decision until the end of the process on the lawsuit filed by Andrey.

Source: https://compromat.group/main/investigations/58195-pered-voynoy-yahtu-putina-evakuirovali-iz-gamburga-teper-izvestno-komu-ona-mozhet-prinadlezhat.html