A yacht owned by Uzbek oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who is under Western sanctions as a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has disappeared from its mooring in Croatia’s central Adriatic.
The yacht Irina VU was docked at a marina in Betina. It was sealed and put under EU, US, and UK sanctions as the property of Usmanov often referred to as one of Putin’s “favourite oligarchs”.
However, the yacht left the port one night almost three months ago, and an almost identical yacht took its place, Dnevnik.hr reported. It said Irina VU was now at the Didim marina in the Turkish part of the Aegean Sea in the Eastern Mediterranean.
It appears that no one had realised the yacht had left and local media only just reported its disappearance.
“We are still determining the circumstances of the yacht’s disappearance,” said Croatian Transport Minister Oleg Butković.
“We all know it vanished under still unclear circumstances. We shall now determine how that happened and whether there were any failings of the system,” he said, adding that the Croatian intelligence service and the state prosecutor were included in the probe.
(Alice Taylor | Exit.al)
Source: euractiv.com
