Jets used for corporate travel by Russian state-owned oil major Rosneft flew at least 13 times to Mallorca, Ibiza, Sardinia and the Maldives when CEO Igor Sechin or people from his social circle were in the same vacation spots, Reuters reports.
Using publicly available data, Reuters tracked 290 Rosneft flights between January, 2015 and May, 2019. Of those round trips, 96 took place during Russian public holidays or between Friday lunchtime in Moscow and Monday morning.
Since the start of 2015, Rosneft corporate jets traveled eight times to Sardinia’s Olbia airport, 15 times to the Maldives and seven times to Spain’s Palma de Mallorca, according to the flight tracking data from planefinder, flightaware, opensky and flight-data.
Reuters found no public information released by Rosneft or the Russian authorities about official events at those destinations, although the company does not always disclose information about its meetings.
For some of the flights to vacation spots, Sechin’s associates, including his wife before their divorce and mutual friends, posted photos on social media placing them at the same location as the Rosneft aircraft at the same time.
Sechin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and head of the world’s largest listed oil company by production, has not appeared in social media posts from the holiday resorts.
But Reuters did photograph a man closely matching his description boarding a Rosneft plane at Palma da Mallorca airport on Aug. 6 last year.
Overall, Reuters found public information from Rosneft or the Russian authorities about official events corresponding to 42 of the 290 flights.
In a statement issued on Tuesday in response to Reuters questions, Rosneft said that as a global company it works in all parts of the world, and that expenditures on corporate aircraft are “carried out in accordance with the approved corporate standards.” It did not give details.
Rosneft declined to answer detailed questions from Reuters, saying the news agency was conducting “information sabotage in the service of the intelligence services of interested states.”
Among the questions the company declined to address were whether Sechin’s employment contract entitled him to use corporate jets for personal purposes or whether Sechin reimbursed the company for private flights.
In a reply sent in April to previous Reuters questions about the use of corporate aircraft by the friends or family members of Rosneft employees, the company said: ”No private transport of family members was carried out at the expense of the company.”
A source close to the Rosneft board of directors said no clause in Sechin’s contract allowing private flights had been put before the board for approval.
Sechin’s use of corporate aircraft for travel to holiday destinations – regardless of whether his contract permits it or not – is part of a pattern of wasteful spending by Rosneft, said Vladimir Milov, Russian deputy energy minister until 2002.
Milov is now a critic of the Kremlin, arguing that Putin’s circle is using Russia’s natural resources wealth for their own benefit.
He also cited a 2017 order placed by a company subsidiary to buy tableware including caviar dishes and silver spoons with a total value of $83,000.
After Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny disclosed the order on YouTube on May 22, 2017, it was canceled the next day, according to Rosneft’s website.
The office of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the Rosneft flights, saying it was an internal, corporate matter. The Russian government’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.