A few days after New Year's 2023, a Dutch company specializing in the delicate work of shipping and storing expensive art unloaded a shipment of paintings and sculptures from a yacht docked in the port of Vlissingen. Among the paintings were works by Salvador Dali, Pierre Auguste-Renoir, and Henri Matisse.
The 68-meter yacht, named Triple Seven, was managed by an offshore company linked to Aleksei Repik, a Russian pharmaceuticals magnate who's also developed real estate in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, now occupied by Russia after a devastating siege.
After unpacking, the artwork was shipped to the Amsterdam airport, then to the capital of Uzbekistan, and three days later to Repik in Moscow, utilizing an obscure Uzbek logistics company called Bek Broker.
Russian collectors of art have been shut out of global markets since Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 resulted in unprecedented sanctions imposed by Western countries. Art dealers pulled out of Moscow, and major auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's closed down what had been profitable offices inside Russia.
Stepping in to the fill the void: shadowy logistics companies like Bek Broker, which has helped import more than 200 works of art into Russia over the past two years, according to new findings by Systema, RFE/RL's Russian investigative unit.
The total value of the art imported to Russia over that period exceeds $36 million, according to Systema's estimates.
Who, Or What, Is Bek?
Headquartered in Tashkent, Bek Broker is far from a newly created, fly-by-night firm.
The company has helped arrange shipping and customs brokerage in Russia for more than two decades, according to customs data, transporting thousands of shipments for Russian clients including oil giant Lukoil and state pipeline operator Transneft.
Owned by four Uzbek citizens, the company registered a Russian affiliate in 2011, located in a nondescript nine-story apartment building in a residential district of Moscow. There is no public record of the company's financial performance.
Bek Broker did not respond to multiple messages from Systema seeking comment.
From 2018 to 2022, customs data show, Bek Broker transported at least 8,700 cargo shipments from Russia to Uzbekistan. Just 106 shipments were made in the opposite direction, into Russia from Uzbekistan.
After the Kremlin launched its all-out war on Ukraine and Western countries imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia, Bek Broker's logistics shifted.
In the 2 1/2 years since the invasion, Bek Broker has handled 1,962 cargo shipments into Russia -- with a declared value of $41.6 million -- as of last month, customs data show. Just 61 deliveries were made from Russia into Uzbekistan by Bek Broker.
Customs data also show a noticeable change in categories of transported goods, with artworks becoming the company's primary goods shipped into Russia, with a declared value of the transported paintings, figurines and other items totaling $36.6 million.
By comparison, Bek Broker imported just $5 million worth of all other cargo during the same period.
Triple Seven
The paper trail tying Repik to the 2023 art shipment comes in part from the Panama Papers, the massive leak of law firm documents in 2016 that revealed how wealthy individuals around the world -- including Russians -- hid their wealth.
The company that managed the yacht Triple Seven is Nawton Ltd., based in the British Virgin Islands. Nawton paid for the Dutch shipping company Kortmann Art Packers and Shippers B.V. to take the art from the yacht and send it to Tashkent, then to Moscow.
The Panama Papers leak indicated that Nawton also owned an aircraft with the tail number M-FINE, which flight tracking data showed had been previously used by Katerina Tikhonova, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's daughters.
In total, 44 artworks and other valuable and semi-valuable items worth a total of $4.6 million were shipped from the yacht by the Dutch company, including paintings by Dali, Renoir, and Matisse; sculptures by Rembrandt Bugatti and Fernando Botero; and Japanese prints. Also included: many elephants -- vases, inkwells, paperweights, candlesticks -- which were a favorite of the Repik family.
In the chummy world of Russian art collecting, Repik himself is not considered to be a particularly astute collector.
"In the circles of market players associated with Russia, Repik is practically unknown and hasn't distinguished himself in any way," Konstantin Akinsha, an art historian and former journalist, told Systema. "He is not a collector. He was more interested in elephants, an interior decorator without taste and understanding."
Repik's wife, Polina, however, is public on social media about her collecting prowess.
On her Instagram page, she has posted photographs of some of her art collection: one, dating from March 2021, shows the Triple Seven yacht and an elephant-shaped vase made by the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle that is valued at $35,000, according to customs data.
Representatives of Kortmann, the Dutch shipper, told Systema that they did not know the final destination of the artworks that they handled in January 2023.
A month later, however, Repik was sanctioned personally by Britain, which cited regular meetings between the businessman and Putin. Australia and Canada later followed suit.
This past January, the yacht Triple Seven was spotted sailing along the Turkish coast, and Polina Repik has continued to publish photos from the Turkey on her Instagram account.
Aleksei Repik did not respond to requests for comment from Systema. Polina Repik, however, told Systema that the family had sold Triple Seven in 2021.
A public maritime registry called Equasis that was reviewed by Systema indicated the yacht was still listed under the Repiks' name as of this month.
She confirmed artwork had been imported to Russia but said it had been transferred to a museum, which she declined to name.
The Silk Road -- For Art
The entire region of Central Asia has emerged as a major conduit for all sorts of companies looking to circumvent Western sanctions and import goods to Russia.
In March 2022, the European Union, along with the United States, Switzerland, and other countries, jointly imposed sanctions on luxury goods shipments to Russia in particular. The restrictions applied to works of art and antiques worth more than 300 euros.
Prior to that, the Russian art market had been a vibrant and a lucrative industry for collectors, experts, shippers, restorers, and all sorts of related businesses. The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction was Salvator Mundi, a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that was sold by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $450.3 million in 2017.
In 2023, however, sales of works by Russian artists within Russia itself increased by more than 125 percent, exceeding $25 million, according to ARTInvestment, a Russian market analysis firm. That's one indication of how the market for Russian collectors has shifted inward, toward Russian artists.
Along with restrictions on the import of luxury goods, Western countries began confiscating assets belonging to Russian oligarchs -- powerful, politically connected businessmen.
In May 2022, British authorities seized a Faberge egg belonging to Viktor Vekselberg, an oligarch who made his fortune in oil and metals trading. Nearly two decades earlier, Vekselberg made a splash in the art world when he purchased scores of Faberge eggs and other objects from the Forbes family in the United States, pledging to return them to Russia.
In November 2022, German police seized 30 paintings from the yacht of Alisher Usmanov, an Uzbek-born billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin, as the yacht was undergoing repairs in Hamburg. Police also seized four Faberge eggs from him.
In 2023, authorities seized artworks from the yacht of Farkhad Akhmedov, an Azerbaijani-Russian businessman who previously served in Russia's upper house of parliament.
Alex Prezanti, a British lawyer and co-founder of a nonprofit organization called State Capture: Research and Action, says any citizen or entity based in Britain or the European Union could face criminal liability if found to be shipping artwork to Russia in violation of sanctions.
He says a person could also be liable if the artwork ended up in a third country, like Uzbekistan, if the sender knew the final destination was Russia. However, the liability would depend largely on what the shipper knew or should have known about the final owner and destination of the artwork.
Make Art, Not Guns
The Repiks were not the only wealthy Russian family who used the services of Bek Broker to ship works of art.
Customs data showed that Mkrtch Okroyan, a businessman whose companies produce engines for cruise missiles and spare parts for military helicopters used by the Russian Army, has also imported artwork via Tashkent.
In February 2023, researchers affiliated with the late anti-corruption crusader Aleksei Navalny published an investigation that found Okroyan's family owned a three-story mansion west of London estimated at about 10 million pounds.
In the wake of that revelation, a number of paintings and other pieces of art, valued around $286,000 according to customs data, were shipped to Uzbekistan; one Russian customs document dated February 21, 2023, shows the name of Okroyan's wife, Alla, signing for the shipment of paintings to Tashkent. Bek Broker then completed the shipment from Tashkent to Moscow
Seven months later, in September 2023, the United States added Okroyan and his family to its sanctions list, with the European Union and Britain following a few months later.
Mkrtich Okroyan did not respond to requests sent to both him directly and to his company.
