Billionaire Russians don’t have the greatest reputation for honesty or general goodness, but we are still horrified with just how few fucks they give about – well, just about anything (except the Orange Menace whore-in-chief – ed).
Case in point? The builder and timber supplier of banking and chemical oligarch Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko‘s hideous Sailing Yacht A are now under investigation by German criminal prosecutor Axel Bieler for using illegally sourced Burmese teak for the deck of the giant Dustbuster. Bieler said analysis of teak used in the construction showed that the teak had not come from a legal plantation. Instead, it allegedly came from rapidly disappearing forests in Myanmar (Burma) – where exporting teak is completely banned.
There’s an even bigger reason than conservation and illegality to stay away from Burmese teak – proceeds from sales typically go straight to allegedly corrupt officials of Myanmar’s newly elected government. That new government was a ray of hope for a population that had grown used to death squads, slave labor and worse, but it appears it’s ‘business as usual’ a year after the new government’s establishment.
But hey – Igorevich wants teak, so Igorevich gets teak – and he just don’t give a fuck.
Read everything about the ugliest superyacht ever built in the thread.
