Russian oligarchs are trying to keep a low profile right now.
Yachts are getting seized and private planes and sanctions are being targeted
at individuals and Putin's inner circle and all that.
And generally, they've been pretty good at hiding their wealth but
there is a secret weapon that investigators are using to discover what
they're trying to keep secret.
And that is the family members and in some cases girlfriends,
ex wives and hired escorts of these particular oligarchs.
So let's talk about a couple of examples including one aide to Putin and
his ex wife.
So this is Igor section, he's apparently very secretive and also tough.
He's nicknamed Darth Vader in the Russian and international press.
But because of his wife's instagram account,
he was able to eventually be linked to a $120 million mega-yacht.
The Amare-Vero,
it's a 281 ft ship which is said to be able to accommodate 14 guests and
28 crew members and it was impounded by French officials earlier this month.
By the way, a 281 ft ship and you can only put 14 guests on it.
You really over spent on that, honestly just go on like a Caribbean cruise or
something, you could bring your whole gang.
But anyway, there's an investigation by the organized crime and
corruption reporting project.
And what they did was they connected photos on the instagram account of
second wife Olga to the yachts route through the Mediterranean.
So, sometimes they use things that appear in the photos,
sometimes they use the geo tags on the photos.
And so in this case, pictures posted to Olga's account appeared to show her and
a friend in black string bikinis posing on a sofa that bore a strong resemblance to
one on the ST Princess Olga.
Elsewhere, Olga posted photos on her social networks that indicated she had
been on a boat supporting the flag of the Cayman islands.
In the report noted that the saint Princess Olga happened to be owned
by a company registered in the Cayman Islands.
And that you can see here, some of the investigative reporting,
linking these different photos, which were able to then be matched up
to satellite photos of the yacht so they know which yacht they were actually on.
That is some hardcore Sherlock Holmes stuff there.
Using the social media accounts, not only of people that are still in the orbit of
these oligarchs, but even people that had been linked to them.
And so we do have other examples of this junk, but
what do you think about this trend?
>> Yeah, tracking them down like that, that's like detective Casper kind of work.
Figuring out what Tulsi Gabbard is gonna do before she does it
[LAUGH] a random reference there.
Okay, so on the Russian oligarch story.
Number one, John's right, they way overpaid and I can tell you why?
If you do the math on it, it's $280 million 14 beds, not even beds,
but enough for 14 people to sit.
That's 20 million a person- >> That's crazy.
>> Okay, so why do they, I mean it's obviously overspending obvious, right?
And John's, right, you could just rent one of those yachts for
an unbelievable price for like anytime you want for like 1% of what they're spending.
Guys, it isn't about the luxury, it isn't that they have such a spectacularly good
time on that boat and it makes them so much happier.
No, for rich people here, I'll explain their motivation.
90% of the motivation for the bad guy rich people is junk measuring,
whose junk is larger, okay?
And in this case, junk is almost literally, right?
I'm gonna buy more junk than you, so that it looks like my junk is bigger, okay?
And because once you have a certain amount of money, you don't need anything.
They're just doing it to measure themselves.
I mean that's why it got to the hilarious state where Elon Musk and
Jeff Bezos literally built phallic symbols to shoot into the sky.
Because they're like, okay, we did the yachts, we did the mansion's,
let's actually design something like a penis and have it shoot into the sky and
mine is gonna be larger than yours and then they had a big fight about it.
So that's what this is all about.
So the fact that they're tracking them down in this case for monsters who
are killing people in Ukraine or helping and aiding and abetting that that's great.
I love the detective work they did in tracking that down.
I love that it was their vanity that led to their fall and I like to twist
on Darth Vader, John, this time around, he says, I am your sugar daddy.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> I don't like star wars anymore, anyway,
yeah, no, I agree.
And look, we've previously had a segment tax the rich,
I think we should update it to sanction the rich.
People need to understand the absolute insane,
pointless excess, what I refer to as dragon sickness.
These are people with severe problems, but they have also discovered and
it's always kind of been a thing.
But in addition to being able to buy yachts and spaceships and things
like that, they can also spend money to try to win people over to their side.
And so in this case, social media is unfortunately for
the oligarchs drawing attention to them.
But look at how much of his time,
Elon Musk puts into his social media activity stealing people's memes and
re posting them and it is successful in getting some people to actually back them.
And to think that a system that produces this insane wealth is actually
a good thing.
They've been convinced that either he's gonna notice them or
they too can follow in his footsteps.
And so, they will continue to support a system that is actively oppressing them
and producing obscene wealth like you see with Elon Musk and Russian oligarchs.
By the way, I don't know how many others we can profile on time we have,
I wanna jump ahead to graphics seven.
We've got the Polina Koroleva, you've probably heard about her,
one of the girlfriends of one of these oligarchs.
But we also have somebody who's a self described sex huntress and I felt for
jenks sake, we've got to get to this.
So there's this video that was produced by Alexei Navalny who's one of the opposition
leaders inside of Russia that linked Oleg Deripaska Russian billionaire
to a yacht trip around Norway.
And the way that they did this was they used the instagram account of a woman
named Anastasia Vashukevich, that her account was used as the raw material for
this documentary.
And in it, they were able to profile an alleged secret maritime
meeting between Deripaska and a senior Russian government officials.
So, in addition to photos of herself generally in bikinis or less or whatever.
Vashukevich also posted what appeared to be photos alongside Deripaska.
Now, Vashukevich described herself as the mistress of Deripaska,
that's actually in her profile.
Now, not an individual picture, it's literally how she identifies herself.
The documentary makes use of her Instagram photos and
videos to depict her joining Deripaska and a Russian deputy Prime Minister on
a pleasure cruise back in august of 2016 and it goes a lot deeper than that.
And you should definitely look into the vice news breakdown of how they've done
some of this work, how the investigation was done.
But I like that Navalny in addition to all of the other activities designed to try to
put a little bit of power, a little bit of inspiration of the Russian people is also
helping to identify some of the insane excess of wealth as well.
>> Yeah, so first of all, let's note for the record that John,
when he said 600, we got to get this for jenks sake.
>> [LAUGH] you're not gonna be interested in the profile, that sex huntress.
>> [LAUGH] okay, no, all right, fine.
There's some chance that I'm a child, a well known child and
hence I would be amused by that.
And of course I am, I like that.
They're like, that they've got a story of a mistress.
I got news for you, those yachts have lots and lots of mistresses.
That is not one mistress on those yachts.
And so it's just one of them apparently putting it on Instagram, I would
say the over under on mistresses on those yachts for those oligarchs is about 20.
And by the way, she said she had tapes about the 2016 elections then
Deripaska and probably his friends talked to her, and she no longer had tapes.
Okay, so these are some bad bad guys.
I love that their stuff is getting taken away from them as they try to profit from
this horrible, horrific war of aggression.