At the start of 2022, former CIA officer Alex Finley, a Colorado native now living in northeastern Spain, was simply researching her novel about a Russian oligarch with a megayacht and had no intention of sparking a global social media craze.⁠

During her morning walks along the marina in downtown Barcelona, she began snapping shots of the ostentatious, multidecked superyachts believed to be owned by Russian oligarchs and posting the pictures on Twitter, bearing witness to one layer of the murky financial dealings and holdings of ultrarich Russians, many of whom are believed to have ties to President Vladimir Putin.⁠

But after Russia invaded Ukraine — and dozens of countries, including the U.K. and the 27-member European Union, targeted Putin’s government and his wealthy friends with harsh sanctions — the megayachts began slipping out of Barcelona’s Port Vell. That’s not surprising, given that yachts belonging to oligarchs have been seized by the governments of the U.K., France, Germany, Croatia, Italy and Spain.⁠

“This place is normally packed with very enormous yachts,” Finley, who worked for the CIA in West Africa and Europe from 2003 until 2009, told Yahoo News from the rooftop terrace of a restaurant overlooking the port.⁠

Read more at the link in our bio.⁠

✍️: Yahoo News⁠
📷: Adria Puig/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images



Source

8 COMMENTS

  1. There is only one word to describe those actions and it starts with the word THE and ends with FT 🤦🏽‍♂️

  2. This is literally useless. The oligarchs only do what Putin tells them to do… he doesn’t care what happens to them

  3. 𝗜 𝗴𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗠𝗿𝘀 Dorota 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗱𝘂𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗵𝗲’𝘀 100% 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜’𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗹𝘆 @dorota_binary_trade_1

  4. If they can do this to people from foreign countries they don’t agree with, what could they do to you?

Comments are closed.