Visiting Ben Gurion
On July 19, a Bombardier Global 6000 aircraft landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport (the approximate cost of an airliner of this class is about $60 million). It didn't stay there for long – only three days, after which it went to French Marseille. But during this time, a luxurious business jet was photographed and later posted on a specialized website. A quick look is enough to remember this plane for a long time – it looks really luxurious. It stands out from other jets with its unique golden color, and one can only imagine the luxury inside.
The tail number of the Bombardier Global 6000 is &LE. According to aviation registries, it has no connection to Russia – the owner of the plane is registered in the United States.
However, this is if you don't examine the historical data of the aircraft. It is revealed that Bombardier was purchased in October 2021.
And up until then, it had a completely different number – M-YOIL. The Russian business elite and investigative journalists are well aware of this letter combination. For a whole five years, a plane with this tail number belonged to the Russian company Rosneft, and none other than Igor Sechin.
Dear bird
In September 2016, an elite Bombardier was captured on camera at Pulkovo Airport. At that time, the plane was assigned to Nicosia: the aircraft was acquired by Shelf Support Shiphold Limited (SSSL), registered in Cyprus. According to the documents available to Sobesednik at that time, the director of the company was Alexander Sokolov, who also headed the financial department of Rosneft.
However, it wasn't Sokolov who was regularly seen alongside this plane, but Igor Sechin himself. For example, in 2018, photojournalists captured Sechin boarding a Bombardier 6000 with tail number M-YOIL. This took place in Palma de Mallorca, where Reuters correspondents were waiting for the head of Rosneft. Later, journalists reported that from mid-July to the end of August 2018, a plane with tail number M-YOIL flew six times to Palma de Mallorca.
During this time, the plane spent 27 days in Mallorca and near the island. But it wasn't only Sechin who used it. On July 15, when the Rosneft plane landed in Palma de Mallorca, Anita Tsoi posted a message on her Instagram * that her family had started a long-awaited vacation. Then she posted a photo geotagged Mallorca, featuring her, her 26-year-old son, and her husband Sergei Tsoi, a top manager of Rosneft. A day later, the Rosneft plane returned to Moscow, and Anita posted a photo geotagged Moscow. She wrote: “Vacation came to an end.”
Everything would be okay, but the business and corporate ethics code of Rosneft then and now states: “We do not use the property and assets of the company for other purposes, or for personal purposes or for personal gain.” But if you really want, then, as they say, you can?
The pandemic does not stop Covid.
In the spring of 2020, Russia closed its borders due to the coronavirus pandemic, preventing millions of Russians from traveling, except for certain types of transportation like cargo and humanitarian flights.
According to the ADS-B Exchange aircraft tracking service, a Bombardier Global 6000 with the tail number M-YOIL frequently visited Austria in 2020.
The Bombardier Global 6000 started 2021 with a flight to the United Arab Emirates and then flew to India.
However, everything comes to an end eventually.
No longer owned by Rosneft.
In October 2021, the Bombardier Global 6000 was sold to the American company TVPX Aircraft Solutions Inc, despite US sanctions against Igor Sechin. The aircraft also changed its tail number from M-YOIL to &LE.
US sanctions were imposed in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, prohibiting direct business contacts with Igor Sechin for American citizens. Despite this, an American company was able to purchase the expensive business jet.
Legally, the purchase appears to be valid since an offshore company owned the plane. However, it's easily discoverable through a simple online search that the plane is linked to Rosneft. This raises questions about whether the Americans violated their own sanctions in this purchase.
The aircraft is now being rented out and made more than 50 flights in 2022 alone, with its last flight from Teterboro to Montreal on September 25th.
Forever silenced.
Many aircraft belonging to the Russian elite have stopped flying internationally and domestically, such as the Bombardier Global Express of the head of VTB, Andrey Kostin, with the tail number T7-SSM, which has not moved for a year. Andrey Kostin The same situation applies to the Bombardier BD-700 with tail number M-MAVP, reportedly belonging to businessman Arkady Rotenberg, which has not shown activity after ending up in Abu Dhabi in March 2022.
The same thing happened with the Bombardier BD-700 with tail number M-MAVP, which, according to media reports, belongs to the structures of businessman Arkady Rotenberg. In March 2022, he ended up in Abu Dhabi and since then has not shown signs of life (he also did not change jurisdiction and numbers).
