The British-Russian businessman Andrei Yakunin is said to have illegally launched a drone during a sailing trip in Svalbard. Norwegian investigators accuse him of violating sanctions. A court acquitted the son of a former follower of Kremlin chief Putin.
The son of a former top Russian official linked to President Vladimir Putin has been acquitted in a drone case in Norway. This was reported by the NTB news agency on Wednesday evening. While the defense attorney for the accused businessman Andrei Yakunin expressed his satisfaction with the verdict, the responsible public prosecutor announced an appeal to the radio station NRK and the newspaper “Verdens Gang”.
Yakunin, a 47-year-old British-Russian national, had denied the allegations before a court in Tromso, northern Norway. There he was accused of flying a drone illegally on a sailing trip in Spitsbergen in the summer, thereby violating sanctions for Russian citizens. He was arrested for this in mid-October.
Recently, drones have been repeatedly sighted over sensitive infrastructure in Norway, including oil platforms in the North Sea or airports. Several Russians were arrested in the course of this and some were sentenced to several months in prison – Yakunin’s acquittal could now have an impact on these sentences.
Yakunin’s father is Vladimir Yakunin, a former head of the Russian railways and one of the founders of the dacha cooperative “Osero”, of which Putin was also a member. All of the founding members went on to have careers either as businessmen or high-ranking officials after Putin’s election as president. Yakunin himself was sorted out from Putin’s closest circle a few years ago.
