The US Department of Justice has accused Russian Vladyslav Osipov and British Richard Masters of helping Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg keep ownership of the Tango luxury yacht. The American agency announced this on its website.
Vekselberg has been under US sanctions since 2018.
At the request of the United States, Spain arrested Masters on Friday. A warrant for Osipov's arrest was also issued
"The signal is clear: Putin's henchmen will not find refuge in their wealth, and those who illegally make such a life possible will be held accountable," said Ivan Arvelo, a special agent in charge of the New York Internal Security Investigation Service.
Arvelo noted: "Russian oligarchs are the product of a corrupt ecosystem, abusing the money system operating in the legal sphere, and enriching themselves with luxuries and leading a lifestyle that ordinary people can only dream of - and all this at a time when thousands of Ukrainians have lost housing due to Russian illegal invasion," he said.
The indictment says that despite the sanctions against Vekselberg, Osipov and Masters, who managed the yacht, tried to hide the fact that the yacht belonged to the oligarch and used American companies and the financial system for this. Among other things, Masters tried to change the yacht's name and use it under the name Fanta to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in transactions that would have been prohibited under the sanctions. The payments were not reported to the US Treasury Department, and payments were made in different currencies to circumvent sanctions, the indictment says.
In April 2022, the yacht Tango was frozen by the Spanish authorities at the request of the United States.
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