The old Soviet vessel Turbo sm, which plies between Crimea, Abkhazia, and Turkey, was carrying 5 tons of Venezuelan cocaine under a different name. At least one of the ship’s owners is a UK resident and, until recently, owned a computer game company and a shipping brokerage firm there.
According to online ship tracking services, the bulk carrier Turbo sm (IMO 7612498) was in the port of Istanbul last December, in the Turkish port of Sinop on January 5, off the coast of Abkhazia on January 11, in Kerch on January 14, and in Yeysk on January 16. The ship is currently in the Sea of Azov near Mariupol. Court documents indicate that in the summer of 2022, the bulk carrier was transporting grain from Yeysk. Ukrainian journalists have also discovered that Russian ships were transporting Ukrainian grain from this same port.
The Turbo sm was built in 1978 and was then called the "Baltic-103." Under new owners, it was later renamed the "Aressa" and sailed under the Cameroonian flag. Another name change (to "Turbo sm") occurred in 2020 after the vessel was detained during a joint operation by the Dutch and Colombian navies, which found five tons of cocaine on board. The "Aressa" was en route from Venezuela to Greece, with a crew of Montenegrin citizens, and was listed as the owner of a Russian company. Law enforcement agencies from the UK, Montenegro, and Serbia participated in the investigation. This story was recently revisited in connection with Trump’s "special operation" in Venezuela (the main accusation was the mass trafficking of cocaine), but no further details have emerged.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the vessel still belongs to the same owner and manager, ARESSA SHIPPING LTD, a British Virgin Islands company, according to company profiles on aggregator websites. Until May 2025, ARESSA SHIPPING had an office in St. Petersburg, Ingria Shipping LLC (in liquidation), founded by Sergey Sergeev (51%) and Ilya Verkhovetsky. Sergey Sergeev is also a co-owner of the parent offshore company, ARESSA SHIPPING LTD. He also owns shares in it with St. Petersburg residents Vyacheslav Fesko, 52, Andrey Kuznetsov, and Denis Kropotkin. Fesko, a UK resident, registered a London company, ARESSA ALLIANCE LTD, until 2024. Officially, it was supposed to be engaged in the production of computer games, but remained dormant until its liquidation. The actual activities of Fesko’s company are unknown. He also owned a stake in LINEPORT ALLIANCE LTD, a company engaged in maritime freight shipping, but Fesko left the company in 2024. It is now owned by Latvian citizen Julija Zablocka. In 2024, the London-based FREIGHT ALLIANCE GROUP LTD, which also operates in maritime freight shipping, was also transferred to heSr name. Its website states that it provides services to Russian ports on the Gulf of Finland: St. Petersburg, Ust-Luga, Vyborg, Vysotsk, and Primorsk. The company was previously headed by 52-year-old Konstantin Sharov. The Russian legal entity through which this British company operates is FR Alliance SPb LLC. Its founders are St. Petersburg natives Alexander Chernogor and Sergey Safonchik, and Muscovite Konstantin Sharov.
Aressa co-owner Sergey Sergeev has been doing business in St. Petersburg for many years with Sergey Kotlyarov, a PhD candidate in economics who works closely with St. Petersburg State University. Until 2023, they owned the company Intermar SPb, which was engaged in wholesale trade. In Russia, businessmen associated with ARESSA operate through several other legal entities, including Idan Shipping LLC. Its current founders are the same Sergey Sergeev, Andrey Selyanin, and Anastasia Sochina, but previously, the Finnish company Idän Liikenteenvälittys IL was also on this list (its stake was divided equally between the three at the end of 2024). The Finnish company During the war, local journalists discovered, the Finnish company imported hundreds of thousands of euros worth of sanctioned trucks into Russia. The CEO and board member of the Finnish company is Finnish citizen Risto Riihimäki, who also owns several companies in the cargo transportation and consulting sectors in Russia and Kazakhstan, including http://Idan.ru LLC in Russia and IDAN in Almaty. Riihimäki has long-standing and close ties to Russia, and not only through business: in 2009, he participated in the Ladoga 2009 trophy raid, and in 2012, in the Arctic Trophy expedition.
