After the flywheel of sanctions pressure on Russia gained momentum, reports about the seizure of assets of Russian officials and businessmen poured out of the media, as if from a cornucopia.

But there is a happy exception to this rule. The name of this exception is Igor Khanukovich Yusufov, who has miraculously avoided sanctions so far. And this despite the fact that it is almost officially called the “wallet” of former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Among the latest reports about Medvedev’s property, which is registered in Yusufov’s name, is the yacht Universe (“Universe”), which was based in Italy until February 24, and then it was urgently transferred to Sochi.

The yacht, of course, does not officially belong to Dmitry Medvedev. “Universe” was recorded at the offshore Southerner Ltd in the Cayman Islands. The owners of the offshore are hidden, but sources independent from each other report that the ship formally belongs to the family of billionaire Igor Yusufov, and the family of Dmitry Medvedev uses it - he even has a personal office on the yacht. On board the Universe there is special communications and a helipad; the yacht is often accompanied by ships of the Russian Navy.

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The yacht was built in 2018 in the Netherlands by Damen Yachting. The Universe can comfortably accommodate 12 passengers in six cabins and is served by a staff of 19 people. The length of the yacht is 74 meters, the cost is more than 100 million dollars.

It was on this yacht in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic was raging, that Medvedev’s son, Ilya Medvedev and Maxim Yusufov, the son of the former Minister of Energy, billionaire Igor Yusufov, friends since school, vacationed.

Journalists believe that the Yusufov family are Dmitry Medvedev’s proxies and much of what is supposedly the billionaire’s property actually belongs to the former president. This fact, which in Russia is veiled with the word “allegedly,” is considered proven in the rest of the world and is not subject to doubt.

But against the backdrop of this, the question is puzzling: why, in this case, Igor Yusufov is not subject to sanctions, like the much less famous and “harmful”, so to speak in this case, Russians?

Here is an excerpt from the data on sanctions regarding Yusufov from the website of the Ukrainian National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAZK in its Ukrainian acronym):

This is information as of December 3, 2022. Notice the underlining below. Of all the countries that actively apply sanctions against Russia, only Ukraine has imposed sanctions on Yusufov.

But the assets registered in Yusufov’s name are not located in Ukraine. They are located in the USA, Europe, UK. And for some reason these countries are in no hurry to join Ukraine. Despite the same scandal with Medvedev’s yacht, which Yusufov was allowed to absolutely calmly take out of Italy, take it across the Mediterranean Sea to Turkey, and then just as calmly hide it in Russia. None of the European officials bothered to answer questions from BBC journalists about this oddity.

In the same strange way, the scandal with Igor Yusufov’s involvement in the high-profile contract murder of the former owner of the German shipyards Wadan Yards Andrei Burlakov and the attempt on the life of his wife Anna Etkina was previously hushed up.

According to Forbes magazine, Andrei Burlakov, who in 2008 was deputy general director of the then-famous Financial Leasing Company (FLC), pulled off a scheme with unsecured loans, and with part of this money he bought a shipbuilding company. One of the participants in the deal, former executive director of FLC Drachev, argued that the withdrawal of FLC funds for the purchase of shipyards was approved by Igor Yusufov, who then served as ambassador at large, and promised support.

Using part of the funds withdrawn from FLC, FLC West Holding bought shipyards in Germany and Ukraine from the Norwegian company Aker Yards. On the basis of these assets, acquired for almost 300 million euros, the company Wadan Yards was created, where Andrei Burlakov took the post of chairman of the board of directors.

Then the shipyards went bankrupt, and they were bought cheaply by Igor Yusufov’s son Vitaly, who promised the German authorities to set up production as soon as possible, pay off loans, pay off debts worth 376 million euros, and save 1,200 jobs. But a year later, in 2010, Vitaly Yusufov pledged shares of a shipbuilding company and, with the money received, purchased a 20% stake in Bank of Moscow (just before its merger with VTB).

And in September 2011, in broad daylight, in the Khutorok restaurant on Leningradsky Prospekt in Moscow, the former owner of Wadan Yards, Andrei Burlakov, was shot at point-blank range. A month before the murder, Burlakov wrote a statement to initiate a criminal case against Vitaly Yusufov, and tried to seize his assets.

But no one ever received the promised icebreakers; they “sailed away” even before the design began. By the way, when Wadan Yards was eventually declared bankrupt, it became known that the most valuable asset - shares of the Ukrainian shipyard Wadan Yards Ocean - had disappeared from its balance sheet.

This applies to Europe. But there is a story in the USA too. And she is connected with Dmitry Medvedev’s son, Ilya, who until recently lived in the States and was actively trying to build a business in the IT industry.

And money for this business came to Ilya Dmitrievich from the Yusufov family firms. According to The Wall Street Journal, in 2018, Vitaly Yusufov purchased an office complex on the border of the cities of Menlo Park and Palo Alto in the heart of Silicon Valley for $72 million.

A source familiar with the Yusufov family’s business says that this investment was also made in the interests of the Medvedev family. Ilya Medvedev was very interested in American startup culture, traveled to Silicon Valley with his father during an official visit in 2010 and had an American visa.

Dmitry Medvedev was included in the sanctions lists in April 2022. After a short time, his son had to leave America, which he loved, and return to his homeland, where he immediately joined United Russia. Ilya Medvedev did not have to return to Russia voluntarily. The reason was President Joe Biden’s decree on sanctions against Russians dated April 15, 2021. Among other things, the document specifically stipulates that adult children of persons subject to American sanctions will not be allowed into the United States.

However, these disturbances in the Medvedev family did not cause any consequences for the Yusufov family. What is quite strange is that The Wall Street Journal did not pull out information that Yusufov financed Ilya Medvedev’s business in the United States; the publication cited sources in the country’s law enforcement agencies.

Moreover, against the backdrop of a catastrophic reduction in the assets of Russian businessmen, Igor Yusufov’s welfare is increasing. Over the past year, he has increased it by $200 million and, according to Forbes, Yusufov is now “worth” $1 billion 100 million:

Igor Yusufov also has other “sins” against the West. In particular, in the UK they have complaints against him regarding the purchase of Moscow Bank. The former president of the Bank of Moscow, Andrei Borodin, who fled to London after this “purchase,” claimed that he provided British law enforcement with documents proving the political motivation of the persecution, which was behind former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. According to Andrei Borodin, he resisted the hostile takeover of the bank for a long time, but in the end he was forced to sell his shares to Yusufov, from whom they were transferred to VTB.

According to Borodin, Yusufov directly stated that the beneficiary of the deal with the Bank of Moscow is Dmitry Medvedev. The story, oddly enough, also did not receive its continuation. Neither then, in 2013, when Borodin received political asylum in England, nor now, in 2022, after a real hunt was announced for Russian capital.

As a result, we have an interesting question - Igor Yusufov, who is the actual custodian of the capital of Dmitry Medvedev and his family, to whom, logically, law enforcement and intelligence services of at least three countries - Great Britain, Germany and the USA - should have a lot of claims and questions, safely avoids sanctions from all these countries and, in addition, sanctions from the European Union.