Inside Putin crony’s superyacht he renamed after his ‘wife ran off with racing driver’ – as it’s seized over Ukraine war
A MAMMOTH superyacht belonging to a Russian oligarch described as Vladimir Putin's "deputy" has been seized by French authorities in response to the brutal invasion of Ukraine.
The yacht belonging to businessman Igor Sechin, whose nickname is "Darth Vader", is almost 86m long, 14m wide, has seven cabins, two swimming pools, and is worth an estimated £108 million (£142m).
French authorities announced on Thursday that the vessel, "Amore Vero", or True Love, was being held in the port of La Ciotat under the terms of the European Union's huge sanctions package against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.
"Thanks to the French customs officers who are enforcing the European Union's sanctions against those close to the Russian government," France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in a tweet.
In a press release, the finance ministry said the superyacht was owned by an entity of which Mr Sechin was the main shareholder.
The 61-year-old, who is head of Russian state oil company Rosneft, is one of 26 prominent people sanctioned by the EU over the invasion of Ukraine.
And the seizure of his yacht has thrown the ex-KGB spy's colourful past into the spotlight once again.
It is believed he bought the yacht in 2012 as a "love boat", and named it "St Princess Olga" after his secretary-turned-wife Olga Rozhkova.
But when the pair divorced in 2017, a heartbroken Sechin reportedly renamed it "Amore Vero" - true love in Italian - in anger.
A second ship owned by Sechin, a steamer named "Duchess Olga", was also given a new name - "Standard".
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Olga, believed to now be 36, left the oligarch for Italian racing driver Francesco Provenzano, leading to Sechin suing for divorce, according to a Russian reporter.
And in another apparent fit of jealousy, the energy tycoon allegedly demolished a £50 million mansion he was building for his glamorous young wife, investigators claimed in 2018.
But a spokesman for Sechin vehemently denied the claims at the time, saying: "It's nice to know that these guys do not have any compromising material, despite the fact that everybody is looking for it.
"There is no compromising evidence, but there is some nonsense, lies. This is not an investigation, it's a parody."
The extraordinary claims appeared in a 63-minute Russian online documentary, as well as a report in the independent Sobesednik newspaper.
Filmmaker Andrey Konyakhin said at the time: "Newly-built buildings were falling down, the walls, floors and ceilings torn apart. It looked terrible.
"All this splendour ended up in an excavator scoop."
Asked why the house was apparently torn down instead of sold, he went on: "A fallout with his wife Olga apparently caused him a serious spiritual wound - so he decided to erase all memories of her.
"Yacht St Princess Olga was renamed Amore Vero and Duchess Olga became Standard."
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Before their bitter split, Olga was a regular user of St Princess Olga, and regularly posted pictures of her on the yacht.
In 2016 alone, she visited the Maldives, Italy, Vietnam, India, Germany, and France on it.
The pair met when Sechin was Vladimir Putin's deputy premier and she was his secretary, although they were rarely seen in public together.
St Princess Olga is reportedly owned by a company based in the Cayman Islands.
The film about Sechin's house was made by the Centre for Investigations Management (TSUR), an organisation backed by Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the country's richest man, who was jailed under Putin for a decade.
A fallout with his wife Olga apparently caused him a serious spiritual wound - so he decided to erase all memories of her
Andrey Konyakhin
It comes as German authorities seized another massive yacht belonging to a Russian oligarch.
Dilbar, a 512-ft superyacht worth $600 million (£449m) belonging to billionaire Alisher Usmanov was seized at a Hungarian shipyard, as part of an EU freeze on his assets.
Earlier this week, the EU described Usmanov as a "pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin," and a man who is "considered to be one of Russia's businessmen-officials, who were entrusted with servicing financial flows, but their positions depend on the will of the president".
This week, Usmanov, who previously owned part of Arsenal, saw Premier League side Everton drop sponsorship deals with him.
A senior White House official has claimed yacht seizures are just the start, and that every Russian oligarch's assets are fair game now.
Speaking on CNN's "OutFront" on Wednesday, Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh told anchor Erin Burnett that the German seizure of a Russian oligarch's superyacht is just the start in an effort to bleed Vladimir Putin's allies in punishment of the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.
Today, Russian businessman Alexander Konanykhin has announced a $1m bounty for the "head" of Vladimir Putin.
The 55-year-old promised the huge reward to "an officer or officers who, in compliance with their constitutional duty, will arrest Putin as a war criminal in accordance with Russian and international law.
In a statement, he wrote: "Putin is not the president of Russia because he came to power as a result of a special operation to blow up residential buildings in Russia, and then violated the Constitution by cancelling free elections and killing his opponents."
He added that as an ethnic Russian and citizen of Russia, he sees it as his moral duty to contribute to the "denazification" of Russia.
"I will continue to assist Ukraine in its heroic efforts to resist the onslaught of Putin's Horde," he went on.
Konanykhin made his fortune in a construction company in the final years of the Soviet Union, and later as the co-founder of one of the first post-Soviet banks, the Russian Exchange Bank.
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He later ended up in an American prison in 1996 on charges believed to be fabricated by Russian authorities.
A year later, he was acquitted and released and was later granted political asylum.