it looked quite obviously staged. he was posing like a big game hunter who d just shot a lion, and it was several minutes before the uniform police officers arrived. boarding the $41; million superyacht phi was the uk s national crime agency. it was gutting, it was heartbreaking. the phi s owner, sergei naumenko, is not on any sanctions list. instead, his yacht was detained on the basis that it is owned, controlled or operated by a person connected with russia. the owner of this vessel is a semiretired, mid level, successful russian businessman. mr naumenko is absolutely not an oligarch and he s not, as described, a close personal friend of vladimir putin. if this were an oligarch s boat, it would be four times the size. the phi was now stuck in canary wharf, unable to move.
when he was the financial times moscow bureau chief. what s really unique about alekperov is that he was a government minister in the soviet union who looked after oil and gas assets, and when he sees capitalism coming, jumps and reinvents himself as an oil executive and the controller and owner of a private oil company. he remained the powerful president of lukoil for nearly 30 years. the only way he s able to maintain control of a major oil company in private hands is that the kremlin trusts him, that putin knows he s not going to cause trouble. within 48 hours of putin s meeting his oligarchs, vagit alekperov s yacht was on the move. i walked past the berth of galactica super nova and.she was gone. two days after the invasion of ukraine, galactica super nova sailed from the port of barcelona.