The luxury French-flagged cruise line, PONANT, has cancelled a lucrative charter aboard Le Commandant Charcot, allegedly because of the arrest of the payment broker acting on behalf of a Russian travel agency that had booked a group of 150 high-profile Russian passengers on an exclusive voyage.
A report in the long-established, highly-respected British newspaper, Financial Times (FT), under the headline "Crypto scandal sinks Russian elite’s $8.5mn polar party cruise", also states that the Russian-owned, Dubai-based travel agency, TRVL, who chartered the vessel has initiated a lawsuit alleging PONANT has failed to refund it $5.8m of the total $8.5m chartering cost after the collapse of the high-end trip.
French-flagged cruise line, PONANT, operates a fleet of 13 boutique ships and is owned by France’s billionaire Pinault family, who control the luxury group Kering, owner of Gucci and Saint Laurent.The spark that set off this chain of events began after the US arrest of a Russian crypto entrepreneur, Iurii Gugnin, whose Delaware-registered company, Evita Investments, acted as the payments broker, apparently with the consent of all parties.
Unsurprisingly, none of the parties contacted by FT are offering comment.
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