Vessel owner a reclusive entrepreneur

PETALING JAYA: The owner of the super yacht which exploded before sinking off Penang is a reclusive man who is said to be flush with money but shuns the limelight.

The yacht was registered in Vanuatu, a South Pacific Ocean nation made up of roughly 80 islands that stretch 1,300km. Vanuatu lies between Australia and Fiji.

“We know the owner was someone called Pascal,” said an official in Langkawi who did not want to be named.

The owner is believed to be French national Vu Anh-Quan, 53.

Also known as Pascal Vu Anh Quan Saken, the self-described entrepreneur and investor is stated in various websites to be the founder of the Shanghai Billionaire Yacht Club as well as other business ventures, including a shipyard in Argentina and Phuket, Thailand.

According to http://billionaireyachtclub.com/, the club specialised in rental and charter of luxury yachts. There are also websites that show him with various celebrities, especially those from the Philippines, and photographs of his various yachts.

Vu was also linked to another yacht, a legendary vessel, the Phocea in 2012.

Built in 1976, the vessel was at the time the world’s largest sailing yacht.

There was controversy in Vanuatu when authorities in the capital Port Vila reportedly seized the yacht after they embarked and found that the registration and crew qualification documents were allegedly fake.

The crew was later fined.

However, Vu was not on board at that time, having flown out of the country before the raid.

He was eventually cleared by Vanuatu authorities. The vessel was detained for 10 months but was eventually allowed to leave for Thailand where it was reportedly renamed Enigma.

Vu was later reported by the Vanuatu Times in an exclusive interview as saying that he would not be suing the government for having detained the yacht for 10 months.

Vu and Brazilian Lucas Bondezan are also said to be involved in “Yartmarine”, part of a shipyard in Phuket which specialises in rebuilding boats.

In May 2014, Czech Jaroslav Horejsek and Bondezan opened a factory in Phuket – Yart Carbon – which specialises in the manufacture of all carbon fibre accessories for mega-yachts.

After the accident when the yacht sank off Penang, Vu was seen in Alor Setar but he would not talk to the press.

He would not allow pressmen to talk to the injured crewmen either.