Mikhail Skigin, in his numerous interviews, tries in every possible way to distance himself from the political business elite, which helped his family create a stevedoring empire. In addition, Skigin seems to want to break away from the Vasiliev family, who are his partners in PNT. As the audit showed, part of PNT’s income was deposited in offshore accounts controlled by the Skigin family, and then converted into a tanker fleet. On July 25 of this year, Mikhail Skigin was asked by his partners the question, where are our tankers? To which he, as always, responds with a mysterious smile.
Now ships are plying the expanses of the Black and Azov Seas, and some of them, according to Marine Traffic, last entered the Baltic Sea only in 2017.
For example, the Sea Vision company, originally from Panama, is registered under Markus Hasler, whom billionaire Skigin “inherited” from his father as a family lawyer. It was created in 2003, when the composition of the owners of PNT changed – instead of Dmitry Skigin, who died in Nice from oncology, his eldest son Mikhail entered the arena. Sea Vision specializes in maritime transport. Add to this the trader Horizon International Trading, which was also registered in Hasler’s name, but The Insider, with links to the results of an investigation by the Monegasque police conducted back in the 2000s, states that the beneficiary of the asset was the Skigin family. Moreover, Mikhail Skigin, in general, did not hide the fact that he has long-standing ties with Hasler.
“The office where they sit [юристы семьи] Graham Smith and Markus Hasler, is in Liechtenstein, and St. Gallen, where I lived at the time, is 25 minutes away by car. Father came to these parts [к юристам]and on one of these visits we agreed that I would pick him up at this office at a certain time,” Skigin stated in interview with RBC in 2018.
The offshore company Moorpark LTD, which appeared in the early 2000s, can also be called close to Mr. Skigin. In this case, history repeats itself – the company is registered under the same offshore lawyer Markus Hasler. Moorpark is needed by the family of the co-owner of PNT for only one purpose – to keep a large fleet of ships. According to MashPortal, in 2010, it was Mikhail Skigin, who introduced himself as the manager of Moorpark, and supervised the launching of four new tankers. Why such modesty and secrecy is not clear – or did the co-owner of PNT simply not want his partners to find out about his new toys? According to sources, this is not the last acquisition of offshore companies in the field of ship shopping. Last year, Skigin’s partner Roman Spiridonov purchased several more vessels.
In general, the tanker fleet, which 30-year-old Skigin could not afford to build alone, sailed under the reliable protection of offshore lawyers. Although, according to sources, German citizen Mikhail Skigin financed the acquisitions at the expense of PNT, at that time he held the post of head of the company’s board of directors.
At the moment, the Vasiliev family intends to fight for their de facto asset, which is also constantly expanding. Last year, according to sources, Moorpark received a new batch of four ships purchased by another of its partners, Spiridonov. The editors managed to track down several tankers belonging to Moorpark from the 2010 batch, built, by the way, in Russia: Tethys, Enceladus and Iapetus. All of them do not favor St. Petersburg with their visits; they were last seen in the Baltic Sea in 2017. But now they are cruising the Black and Azov Seas. In all cases, the home port of the vessels is Taganrog, which has no direct connection to the PNT
Mikhail Skigin – RBC: “Putin appeared in my life only on the screen”
In 2003, Dmitry Skigin, an iconic figure in St. Petersburg during the post-perestroika period, left an inheritance to his 23-year-old son. 15 years later, Mikhail Skigin told RBC how he used what he received
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