Above: A building purchased with laundered money in the coastal town of Djenovici, Montenegro. Credit: Stelios Orphanides

For three years, a sleek 21-meter yacht moored in Porto Montenegro, an exclusive marina on the Balkan nation’s Adriatic coast. But documents obtained by OCCRP suggest that the boat was more than just a pleasure cruiser for the rich: It was a vessel for moving money of dubious origin via inflated yacht rental fees.

Between 2010 and 2012, Asti Services Ltd, the Belize-registered company that owned the yacht, paid moorage fees to the Montenegrin marina, which advertises itself as a “yachting paradise.” Over that period, the company reported receiving yacht rental payments of 3.1 million euros (US$4.2 million) from two British Virgin Islands (BVI) companies whose beneficial owner was a key organizer of the infamous Magnitsky tax fraud in Russia.

A separate set of payments Asti made to purchase yacht insurance strongly suggest that the yacht in question is the Crystal Princess, a 21-meter, four-cabin cruiser. The sum Asti reported collecting in rent was considerably more than the amount similar vessels yield in Montenegro, raising questions about the nature of the transactions.

Asti’s yacht income shows up in records leaked from Ukio Bankas, a now-defunct Lithuanian bank that was a key cog in a scheme dubbed the Troika Laundromat. The Laundromat enabled Russian elites to move money out of the country, spend lavishly on luxury goods, and sometimes launder funds, hide assets, or evade taxes. From 2006 through 2013, the system shuffled $4.6 billion through a network of shell companies set up by Troika Dialog, a Russian investment bank.

An additional 1.1 million euros (US$1.5 million) Asti spent to buy a four-story apartment building in the Montenegrin coastal resort of Djenovici is also recorded in the Ukio Bankas leak.

The money for the building came from the illicit proceeds of the Magnitsky affair, according to Bill Browder, an American-born financier who once made large investments in Russia. Browder was spurred to become a vocal opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an anti-corruption activist when his tax lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in prison after exposing the theft.

Browder showed reporters copies of detailed evidence he submitted to Montenegrin prosecutors about Asti’s apartment building purchase in 2017. Neither the country’s supreme state prosecutor, Ivica Stankovic, nor the chief special prosecutor, Milivoje Katnic, took action after receiving his complaint, he said.

Taken together, the yacht rental payments and the building purchase show how millions of dollars of dubious — and in some cases definitely criminal — Russian origin found their way into a country seeking to join the European Union.

Montenegro is required to crack down on organized crime and money laundering as a condition of joining the bloc, a process it began in 2012. In March, the EU gave the country until the end of 2019 to do more on tax transparency or face blacklisting.

“This is not the conduct one would expect of an aspiring EU member state,” Browder said in reference to the payments. “Many people seem to be enjoying the blood money and this new information is just one more example.”

A public relations officer at the supreme state prosecutor’s office told OCCRP to contact Stankovic directly. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Locals in Djenovici said they didn’t know who owns the Asti Services building, which is just a short distance from the beach. Its apartments are rented out to vacationers who come and go, they said.

Several locals in the former fishing village also said they assume the building is owned by Russians — and they’re right. Documents and business associates of Asti Services indicate that the widow of a deceased Russian lawmaker and former FSB officer is behind the company.