This is super yacht news with eSysman hi welcome back to the channel all right we've got a doozy
for you tonight a yacht trying to flee a rest in in the European country but we'll
get into that in a minute I just wanted to give you an update on motor yacht Nord
the first so we talked about Nord in the previous videos a vessel was in Hong Kong
quite a high profile visit as it turned out there's people getting upset about the fact that
the the governments in Hong Kong didn't want to arrest that vessel The Vessel then left and headed
to South Africa a story that we broke on the channel here and since the vessel has been heading
down there the mayor of Cape Town and the premier of of that province in South Africa they've called
for the vessel to be prevented from docking in in South Africa now they they as I mentioned in
the last video they don't have control over the ports and it is down to the national government
so up until now that the national governments hadn't said anything about this story but they
have come out and made a statement and they said that they had no reason to apply the
sanctions brought against the Russian owner of the yacht Aleximorejov so Vincent Maguena who is
the president Ramaphosa's spokesperson he said in Pretoria on Tuesday that South Africa has no legal
obligation to abide by sanctions imposed by the U.S and the EU and he said that we have no reason
to prevent the entry into South Africa so that's the official stance of the African government
that the vessel will be allowed to arrive there I also saw in another in another article
where they were actually advocating for Russian Yachts to go there because they said they have
the facilities to be able to maintain the vessels so they're actually actively seeking for vessels
to go there for that reason speaking of motor yacht Nord the vessel has actually because of
that spotlights I've said that's been on this vessel and the vessel headed through the Singapore
strait and through the Malacca Straits and then it turned west into the you know in the Indian Ocean
to head down towards South Africa and then as of 24 hours ago the vessel went dark so the vessels
AIS has stopped broadcasting for over 24 hours -now at one point about that that is not something that
you just switch off AIS you can restart an AIS unit but the unit is designed to be on all the
time and the only way to switch it off is to you know throw in some breakers or physically pulling
cables out of the bottom of the unit so that is a deliberate thing other vessels are very close
to that vessel in the area you may or may not know that AIS is broadcast on VHF radio frequency and
it is picked up by satellites and that's how we receive satellite AIS tracking so other vessels
in that area are broadcasting the signals without issues it's more more likely that they've switched
it off on purpose the last known location of motor is currently on screen now some might say that the
vessel has done this to protect themselves from a piracy there is piracy in the Indian Ocean however
the areas that they've just been through the Singapore Australia the malacca's trades there's
more incidents of piracy in that area than there are in the area that are currently in now it's
unlikely that Alexi Motors offers on board very unlikely based on my own experience yacht owners
very seldom travel on a vessel when it's going across an ocean many reasons for that most of
them don't actually like being at Sea in weather also you know they're working and it doesn't make
it doesn't make sense for them to spend that much time on the boat when it's transiting
like that but it does bring the question that where is it why is the vessel sailing across
these oceans usually only reason really a yacht is moving is because the owner wants the vessel to be
somewhere and you know if you wanted if the vessel wanted to go somewhere in Europe or to Turkey or
something like that it would have gone it would be heading to Suez Canal and not around the Cape
of Africa so yeah it's a bit of a question as to where the vessel's heading right now
anyway we'll keep you up to date on that when we know more so we'll move on to the main story now
and this is about a 100 million dollar yacht that we mentioned recently in a video that
tried to flee arrest in Barcelona the yacht is formerly known as motor yacht Valerie and up
until a couple of weeks ago that was the name on the stern the vessel's name changed then to
Meridian a now I had some trouble trying to figure out why this vessel's name had changed because I
knew that they'd been arrested I couldn't quite understand it's unusual for a vessel to be allowed
to do something like that when it's under arrest the story behind this you could make a movie out
of this actually so the vessel was arrested in March and it's been in Barcelona ever since in the
mb92 Shipyard and the as I said in the previous video the owner had stopped paying for upkeep
of the vessel as soon as the vessel was arrested so the vessel's just been sat there ever since no
idea who's paying the crew salaries if that's the case but obviously it still has a career on board
based on the actions that happened here recently the vessel was moved recently and bn92 applied
to have the vessel moved out of the shipyard to a vacant berth obviously so they can continue
working and doing the the normal stuff that they do and the vessel did move I Had A source told me
that the that Valerie was actually connected or Meridian a was connected to an external generator
to run a power on the vessel now the story- is a bit confusing so I'll try and lay
it out for you but according to the IMO database the international Maritime organization the vessel
is owned by Solberg Services Limited and in actual fact the management company according to
the IMO database again is Royale Royale Oceanic International yacht management limited which is
based in Newcastle upon time which is in the UK but there is another name another company name
that has been thrown about in some of the press reports that I've seen so there's a little bit
confusing and this is exactly why they do it so the vessel is owned like I said officially by
Solbeck Services Limited now these companies it's not like a company that has you know makes coffee
or something and then it just happens to own a yacht, these companies are created they are shell
companies they have only one function and that is to be the owner of this yacht and the owner
of the yacht is obviously in the background but it's done on purpose to hide the ownership who
the true owner is- so the company's name Solberg Services Limited but there's
another name called Amtec worldwide limited which were both reported to be the owners of
the yacht and they probably both are connected in some way one company is owned by another company
etc and this is why they do it to create confusion. now the company which is called Amtec they gave
permission to another shell company which is currently unknown the name of that company, they
gave permission to them to run this yacht, it's most likely the same people, it's
just the movements on paper and then they change the name of the yacht from Valerie to Meridian a
now the crew on board then removed the old name put up a temporary new name probably
with stickers remove the names off the sides of the boats as you can see in this photograph
and then the management company which applied for and was granted permission for the vessel
to leave under the new name now I don't know if that management company was Royale Oceanic limited
International Limited in Newcastle upon time we did contact them we have not had a reply as of yet
if we get a reply I will bring that to you to see what they say we've asked them for a statement but
the management company they asked for and received permission initially for the vessel to leave
now what the plan was apparently was to leave the EU to get out into international waters and then
to head to a friendly country now what I believe most likely would have happened is that vessel was
probably light on fuel they certainly wouldn't have been allowed to fill up with fuel I would
I would be very surprised if they were given the permission to fill up with fuel so they
probably would have needed field so they probably would have gone to to North Africa somewhere and
filled up and then probably headed to Turkey the Port Authority Transit granted that permission
but then they got wise and then they they sort of figured out that it was the same boat that it was
under sanctions and then the Spanish Civil guard the police there they went down and boarded that
vessel and they prevented it from leaving but I'm told that it was minutes away from leaving
so they must have disconnected the this generator that we mentioned gone on to
their own generators got ready to leave and then it was thwarted at the last minute
now I would be interested to know if the crew on board are British or that is a British captain if
anybody out there is watching who has recently worked on this vessel or has worked on it in
the past then you know who where the crew is from be really interested to find out that information
so if you could get in touch and let us know but that is a really interesting story isn't it
and the idea that they they thought that they would be able to leave like that is is quite
extraordinary and they almost they were almost successful at sends out it does the owner Sergey
Chamizov he is xkgb and he's obviously close with Putin and who was also xkgb and there
was a story where they tried to do something similar back in when they were in the KGB and
that that plan also failed but it seems like they might have gotten the idea from an old KGB plan
very interesting very James Bond stuff isn't it anyway I'm gonna leave it there one thing we have
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thank you
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