Hi welcome back to the channel well it seems like a long
time since I did one of these videos. Had a bit of a break we're all refreshed now ready to go.
One of the things I love about about doing these videos is the amount of people that contact
us and send us photographs and videos and stuff of different vessels around the world it seems like
a vessel can go nowhere without being spotted by somebody who is a lover of the show or a
subscriber. As a great example of this we had some images sent into us from Ushuaia which is in
Argentina. Anybody who's ever been to the Antarctic will know that Ushuaia is a staging area for
going down to the Antarctic. And we got photographs here of M/Y Octopus after she returned from her
Antarctic expedition and you can see here in some of the photos she's an anchor in in the bay in
Ushuaia Bay and in some of the photos and videos she's docked because she she went to anchor then
she docked and now she's back at anchor. One of the photographs even shows a rainbow emanating
apparently from The Vessel. Other vessels that have been spotted lately we've got some images
here or an image here of M/Y A now she was spotted on the 22nd of January and this was at
12:30hrs local time in Al Hamra Marina which is in Raz Al Khaima. Still got no flag on the stern
um still not registered on the IMO database so she's still got no flag stated it seams.
Other vessels spotted Plan B you can see Plan B here is in the Gold Coast so quite a few people
send in photographs of that vessel this was the vessel that came in and it got on the news in
Australia about who owned it and they were kind of worried that it might be owned by Russian oligarch
which we don't think it was The Vessel turns out was actually once an Australian Navy vessel which
we told on on the channel here first. Another vessel that has been spotted recently is M/Y
Nord, now we haven't mentioned Nord for a while she's been lying low in the Maldives she's just
turned up in a new location as you can see in these photographs here however I'm not going
to tell you where she is right now you'll have to come back for the next video for that we're
going to do a little bit more about the yacht in the next video but she's definitely been
spotted this is these images are from yesterday so but we'll let you know if you've been there
before you might know where it is already but anyway we will go into that in the next video
So we'll move on now to the main story and this is about two men including one British subject
who have been charged with helping a Russian oligarch this is the U.S justice Department's
words helping the Russian oligarch protect and operate a 90 million dollar yacht. Now the yacht
that they're talking about here is M/Y Tango and you might you might know if you've been watching
the channel since last year that Motor Yacht Tango was actually seized in Palma de mallorca in Spain
I think it was in April last year and the vessel has been sat there ever since. She she did move a
few months ago and the footage you can see now is when she moved from a shipyard where she was
having worked on at the time of the seizure over to another Marina now you probably remember
the footage that we showed at the time of the U.S federal agents boarding that vessel in Spain
now the the two men that were charged one is a Russian citizen who also has Swiss citizenship
and his name is Vladislav Osipov and he's 51 years old and the other person like I said a British it
says in the in the U.S justice department of British citizen but we're actually subjects
not citizens and his name is Richard Masters 52 years old now the British man Masters he he
owns a a yacht management company called Master Yachts which is based in palm of the Majorca and
um the justice department said he allegedly took over the management of motor yacht Tango
and he allegedly changed the yacht's name on paper to m/y yacht Fanta to help avoid
sanctions restrictions from Banks now if you British you'll know already know the connection
between the two names but we'll get into that in a minute um so Masters was arrested in Spain Ozipov
the the Russian he's still at large but Masters was arrested the British subject was arrested by
um after a request by the U.S authorities and now the U.S is looking to extradite him to the U.S to
face those charges now the ultimate beneficial owner of m/y Tango is alleged to be Victor
Vexelbeck this is according to the U.S Department of Justice again and he was sanctioned in 2018
now both of the men allegedly used shell companies to allow Vexelberg's ownership of
this yacht the U.S sanctions forbid American companies such as Banks to do any business
with people who have been sanctioned now in addition Ozupava Masters had yacht employees
continue to do business with your company with U.S companies and used a series of workarounds
to do to avoid detection including using shell companies to conceal the ownership of the yacht
payments in other currencies and through third parties the federal prosecutors in the U.S said
now Ozipov seems to have been involved in setting up shell companies in order to hide the ownership
of the yacht whereas Masters seems to be involved more in the day-to-day running of the vessel
um and one of the things that U.S departments have Justice said is that it says as a result of these
schemes the working mechanisms of Tango to include its internet technology weather forecasting and
Computing systems as well as Tango the trappings of Tango including satellite television luxury
goods and teleconferencing software where all U.S origin products Services supplied by U.S companies
to the benefit of Vexelberg that's from the US Department of Justice now one of the interesting
things is is that all of those all of those things the internet services Satellite Television
services they can all be supplied by companies outside of the us and one of the satellite
internet companies is actually based in Palmer the Majorca which many of the yacht management
companies will have Partnerships with technology companies so one favorite one company you know one
one management company will favor this particular satellite internet company and they will push that
out to all of the Yachts that they manage and they won't generally work with different companies and
they have their favorites business cooperation whatever you want to call it like I said that the
name of the yacht was changed from Tango to Fanta on paper now why any like I said any you anyone
from the UK will already know that the connections here now Tango is a carbonated orange drink that's
sold in the UK I believe it's only sold in the UK Maybe maybe it's sold in other countries but
I know it's definitely very popular in the UK and Fanta is obviously owned by the Coca-Cola company
and it's sold all over the world and they're both orange drinks right so the name was changed
to Fanta probably thought that was quite funny it's not a very well concealed change of name is
it having said that there are vessels out there actually called Fanta which is quite interesting
now one of the things I wanted to talk about is the legal exposure for the crew now we have
a lot of supporters in the industry that watch the channel and and send us information about
different vessels movements all of stuff that we mentioned before photographs Etc but we also
have some criticisms or some people who criticize the channel too and one particular person who's
contacted us on numerous occasions whose name is unknown to us but we suspect we know who he is
we're going to call him Captain Jack for the sake of this video he has sent in a lot of criticisms
directed towards us and he has a couple of things just to set the same but stay with us because this
is going back to that story and one of the things he says is why is there no reporting on the number
of crew that have through no fault of their own these are the crew that work on sanctioned
vessels lost their jobs as a direct result of the sanctions placed against their owners
and then he said the U.S department for transport I'm sorry the UK department for transport has
confirmed to Nautilus International that's a union for seafarers but the seafarers are not
within the scope of the sanctions regulations that the UK government is applying to Russian sanctions
Russian super yachts so first of all he criticizes us for not reporting on the crew affected now we
have reported on that so he's actually incorrect the video ghosts both I'll put a link up here at
the end of that video we talk about how many crew have been affected by sanctions since
the invasion of Ukraine we mentioned it and we've also mentioned it in various news videos
the other thing about they he said that the crew are not the target for the UK sanctions
now some of the examples of the way m/y Tango broke sanctions laws are involving the crew and
that's why I brought that up one example is on November 16 2018 Tango employee a they've
referred to it in the indictment which is most likely we believe the captain because
he instructed other Tango staff and crew to use the term Fanta for invoices related to tango and
to avoid the mention of Tango that is a quote from correspondence now we we believe that's
the captain or the chief engineer most likely because who else instructs other members of
staff and crew to do things it's the captain or chief engineer most likely the captain
um on September 27 2019 Tango employee a emailed Ozipov who is the person who was alleged to have
bee hiding the the ownership of the vessel he and he also emailed Tango employee B
um it was another crew member on the vessel and the co-conspirator 2 employee that is a
coach conspiracy two is Master Yachts the yacht management company he emailed them to describe
discussions he had about how to circumvent sanctioned person one that's Victor Vexelberg
from having his name on Tango's letter of authority so so he was emailing everyone
consent to talk about how he was concealing the ownership how does that affect the legal the legal
aspects of this towards that those crew members now they may not be the target of sanctions but
this vessel has been seized under forfeiture laws because of illegally working under because
of sanctions illegally working with companies in the U.S and and these people allegedly were
directly involved in circumventing those sanctions now that puts them at legal Jeopardy does it not
now the reason why I bring this up is because there are lots of people who work on Yachts
that have been sanctioned and there are people who contact us and say I'm going to dispose
is it sanctioned should I go or we don't know who the management company is things like that
um what I would say to those people is just because you are not the target of sanctions
just for working there you can easily get pulled into something like this I'll give
you an example if you are say a second officer on the bridge or you're a second engineer and
your captain instructs you to not use the name of the vessel on paperwork but to put
another name what are you going to do are you going to say no are you going to say I'm risk
because that's risking your job right that you're going to say I can't do that because it's illegal
you're not going to do that you're going to say okay and you think well it's not a problem right
but the US Departments have Justice managed to get hold of this correspondence so you are potentially
opening yourself up for illegal Jeopardy so that's a decision that you have to make when you take a
job on a yacht that is under sanctions because of a current war in Europe one last thing be
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