Today the 13 crew members of the “Persephone”are due to plea for the fire that broke out Friday night in Hydra causing a major environmental disaster.

Those arrested are facing felony charges, while with each passing day more and more evidence is coming to light both about what happened during the fire and about the passengers on board, mostly Kazakhstani, who, after the yacht docked in Vouliagmeni, returned home.

It is noteworthy that among the passengers was a Kazakhstani oligarch named Daniyar Abulgazin.

According to Public Eye, the 55-year-old is Timur Kulibayev’s “sub-captain” and began his career as a student at the Felix Derzhinsky Higher School of the KGB of the USSR in Moscow, graduating in 1991.

Watch the video and photos a few hours after the fire

Abulgazin from the beginning stood out and evolved in financial and business circles.

Timur Kulibayev probably met Daniyar Abulgazin at the state-owned company Kazakh Oil in 2002. Since then they have not strayed far from each other. Daniyar Abulgazin, whose personal fortune is estimated at more than $400 million, offered President Timur Kulibayev’s son-in-law Timur Kulibayev the loyalty and experience he needed. Dias Suleimenov, Daniyar Abulgazin’s son-in-law, quickly joined the ambitious trio.

As kiar.center writes, unfortunately for the company, correspondence between Daniyar Abulgazin and Dias Suleimenov regarding oil-related affairs was leaked online and became what is known as the “Kazaworld leaks,” which shed light on the secretive community around Timur Kulibayev and the golden years of oil-related affairs.

Timur Kulibayev was appointed as head of the National Wealth Fund and was followed by Daniyar Abulgazin. Abulgazin was the chief manager of the oil and gas sector, including KazMunayGas – Kazakhstan’s state-owned giant.
Photos of the fire on Friday night

Together Timur Kulibayev and Daniyar Abulgazin were acting in the interests of Vitol while maintaining their own corporate positions. They allowed Vitol to gain a monopoly on the marketing of Kazakhstan’s oil resources for a kickback they gave in an elaborate scheme to avoid detection and prosecution.

Vitol gained control of the two major oil fields by providing a loan to KazMunayGas.

The “cash for crude oil deal gave Vitol preferential access. There is nothing criminal about this in itself, it is often applied to third world countries that are cash-hungry. However, the way it was done makes the picture complete. Nearly a billion dollars ended up in the pockets of the Nazarbayev/Kulibayev clan.

The Kazaworld archives show that Vitol’s privileged position was obtained by exploiting politically exposed persons. The scheme was based on joint venture underwriting and was registered in 2003 by Vitol in Rotterdam.

The name of the company is Ingma Holding BV. It was created to “invest in Kazakhstan”, but in fact Ingma Holding BV serves a contrary purpose, as the documents show.

Daniyar Abulgazin and his team created itto extort money from Kazakhstan and bribe local government authorities. The small and seemingly unknown company is actually a hidden world-class oil trader with sales and revenues in the billions.

During 2009-2016 its turnover reached $93.3 billion. This is 1/5 of the total oil exported from Kazakhstan. Ingma reported revenues of more than $1 billion paid to shareholders of the private company without stating who those shareholders are.

The ownership of “Persephone”

The 53-metre vessel is reportedly owned by multimillionaire Greek-American businessman Eric Vassilatos, but the Coast Guard documents list Adriano Cefai, who has a management company for such vessels in Malta, with a branch in Greece, as the person responsible.