![COLUMN | Bang! The gavel falls again: Saipem and ADES; Seacor for sale; death penalty in CNOOC; Gabon corruption; “dark fleet” master in the dock (part two of two) [Offshore Accounts]](http://media.assettype.com/bairdmaritime%2F2026-06-30%2Ftzu8jwt2%2FUntitled-November-24-2025-at-09.11.06-1.jpeg?w=480&auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=max)
Earlier this week, we covered the sale of Italian-owned jackup rigs to a Saudi operator and a US company shareholder’s urgent call for its own Middle East rigs to be sold despite uncertainty in the region. This week, we look at other major cases in the offshore and shipping sectors being settled in court.
Don’t worry that that last bang was the gavel falling, not a firing squad shooting Yuan Guangyu, the former deputy general manager of Chinese state oil company CNOOC and former chief executive of oilfield services and rig owner China Oilfield Services (COSL). Earlier this month, he was convicted of taking bribes in a verdict announced by the Xuzhou Intermediate People's Court of Jiangsu Province.
Mr Yuan was found guilty of accepting over US$22 million in bribes and was sentenced to death for his crimes but with a two-year reprieve, so that if he commits no further crimes, the sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment. As per Chinese state media, Mr Yuan was also deprived of political rights for life (I am not sure what these might be…), was booted out of the communist party, and was ordered to have all his personal property confiscated (presumably, he won’t need it anyway while in prison).
For four decades from 1982 until his retirement in late 2019 at the age of 60, Mr Yuan rose through the ranks of the Chinese state oil industry, including being the CEO of COSL from 2003 to 2007, just after the company listed in Hong Kong, before returning to its parent company CNOOC. From 2007 onwards, he served as General Manager of CNOOC Northern Drilling Company, General Manager and President of CNOOC Oilfield Services, General Manager of CNOOC (China) Tianjin Branch, Director of CNOOC Bohai Petroleum Administration Bureau, and Executive Vice President and later President of CNOOC.
Now aged 67, Mr Yuan faces a bleak future despite his glittering professional and academic career (he also held an eMBA from the prestigious China Europe International Business School).
The charges against him were extensive. He was accused of accepting arrangements for golfing activities that could have affected the impartial performance of official duties; he sought bribes from staff to award job promotions; he engaged in trading money for sexual favours; and, after retirement, he illegally engaged in profit-making activities and held posts in violation of regulations, all related to the business areas under his former jurisdiction.
As per Chinese media, “without any bottom line of discipline or law, he recklessly engaged in profiteering from oil, extensively practiced trading power for money, took advantage of his positions to seek benefits for others in project contracting and business operations, and illicitly accepted a huge amount of money and valuables.”
I don’t think readers will be surprised by another corruption case in China, but the claim of illegal golfing is a little odd. The gavel has fallen, and Mr Yuan only escaped being executed because of mitigating factors.
After he was arrested, he truthfully confessed his crimes, voluntarily disclosed some criminal facts not yet known to the supervisory authorities, he showed repentance, he actively returned the illicit gains, and all the bribery proceeds and interest have been recovered by the Chinese state. This constituted circumstances for a lenient punishment so that the death penalty has been suspended.
I imagine this case will encourage others to confess in future.
One of the dark jokes surrounding China’s ally Russia since the start of its brutal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is the growing number of Russian government officials and business executives who died under mysterious but violent circumstances. Many were said to have “accidentally” fallen from windows and balconies or committed suicide. Amsterdam-based The Moscow Times has a full listing of the unfortunate accidents afflicting those seemingly out of favour with President Vladimir Putin up to the end September of last year.
These accidents are on top of the routine murder and assassination of the president’s enemies such as the opposition politicians Alexiy Navalny and Boris Nemtsov, and the dissident artist Semyon Skrepetsky, who was shot dead in Poland earlier this month.
We note that Vyacheslav Leontyev, the former publisher of the Russian Communist Party's newspaper Pravda, joined the club in October, and Sergei Tropin, the former Russian Deputy Justice Minister, apparently drowned in his bathtub in his apartment in Moscow in February of this year.
“While some deaths were officially ruled accidents or suicides, the frequency and context of these fatal falls have fuelled speculation that some victims may have been defenestrated for their political views, corruption ties or possessing inconvenient knowledge,” The Moscow Times noted.
Really?
But now Russia is moving once again to follow the example of Vietnam and China and implement the death penalty for corruption. Russian State Duma deputies from the Fair Russia faction have submitted a bill proposing the introduction of the death penalty for corruption crimes that undermine citizens’ security and the country's defence capabilities, equating such corruption with treason.
After hundreds of thousands of Russians have died in the war and many of the country’s oil refineries have been blown up by Ukrainian drone strikes, one might have thought that the people doing the most damage to the country were not corrupt officials, but those who continue to pursue the disastrous war.
But perhaps the two categories, ahem, overlap.
Readers will be shocked to discover that China is not the only country plagued with corruption.
Our favourite anti-corruption site OCCRP has revealed that Fabrice Albert Andjoua Ondimba Bongo, son of Gabon's former President Omar Bongo, who died in 2009, acquired millions of dollars in properties in Dubai while managing the Gabon state budget. He and his mother, the Gabonese judge Marie-Madeleine Mborantsuo, set up a French real estate holding company, which OCCRP says, “owns a sizable property in a fashionable suburb near Paris,” and that, “while in public office, Andjoua shipped a rare supercar worth US$400,000 from Belgium to Gabon.”
For car connoisseurs, this was a Brabus GLE900 Rocket supercar, worth over US$400,000 and said to be the world’s fastest SUV. If only you worked as hard as Mr Andjoua, you might be able to afford one.
OCCRP reporters discovered that Mr Andjoua acquired millions of dollars of properties in (surprise!) Dubai between 2020 and 2023, while he was director general of Gabon’s state budget department under the presidency of his half-brother Ali Bongo Ondimba. Mr Ali Bongo Ondimba was overthrown in a coup by the Gabonese military in 2023.
Surprisingly, Mr Andjoua remained in government after the coup and became Director General of Competition, Consumer Affairs, and Fraud Control (yes, that's the actual title) under the transitional military government – but he was reportedly dismissed in September 2025 following public criticism that he was trying to manage the department remotely from Dubai. There’s working from home, and working from a penthouse suite in a golf resort in the UAE.
Now he faces a judicial inquiry in Luxembourg following reports made by the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Registration and Land Administration Department of the Grand Duchy.
What were the UAE authorities thinking letting a politically exposed person amass so much property without a thorough anti-money laundering check?
He didn’t just own one property. The Gabonese official seems to have had ambitions of a thriving AirBnB-type business, owning 43 properties, of which 28 were one- and two-bedroom apartments located in the Sobha Creek Vistas Tower A in the Meydan district of Dubai. These were all purchased while he was director general of the state budget from 2020 to 2023 and cost around US$15 million.
Some have been sold, but OCCRP reported that the dictator’s son and former budget boss still owns ten apartments in the luxury residential community of Golf Town in Dubai.
Of course, after fifty years of family control of Gabon, Mr Andjoua is not the only member of his family facing heat on corruption.
OCCRP reported that no less than eight of Mr Andjoua’s half-siblings have been indicted in France, as per the National Financial Prosecutor’s office (PNF). Readers will be surprised to find that the investigations apparently concern the Bongo family members allegedly receiving embezzled public funds, and for corruption.
The good news is that the PNF said Mr Andjoua was not under investigation as part of that case.
His mother, Madam Mborantsuo, was the founding president of the Constitutional Court of Gabon and held that position for over 30 years, most conveniently. She and her court oversaw contested presidential election results in 2009 and 2016, and on both occasions (surprise!) the court sided with then-President Ali Bongo, her stepson. She had two children with President Ali Bongo’s father, former President Omar Bongo.
The judge is alleged to own over US$3 million in properties in Dubai as well as well as the share in the property in France with her son. Madam Mborantsuo has also been under judicial investigation in France since 2014 on suspicion of “aggravated laundering of embezzlement of public funds,” as per OCCRP, but no charges have been filed and we emphasise that she and the other members of the Bongo family have a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Oh, wait! The former first lady and wife of Ali Bongo and her son have been found guilty of corruption in Gabon and were sentenced to twenty years in prison in 2025, as per the BBC. Sylvia Bongo and Noureddin Bongo were not in court, having left for the United Kingdom for medical treatment after twenty months of detention after the coup. Noureddin Bongo was also ordered to pay back US$2.1 billion (with a "b") as restitution to the Gabonese state for his embezzlement.
Switzerland has also launched an investigation against Sylvia Bongo, the public prosecutor's office in the country told the BBC.
When one family runs an entire country for fifty years, it’s hard not to be suspicious when the various wives, mistresses and children seem to have accumulated so many side perks, properties, and wealth overseas.
Finally, the gavel has banged in the criminal case of the Georgian Master of the "dark fleet" tanker Bella 1, which was renamed Marinera and reflagged to Russia during a pursuit by the US Coast Guard cross the Atlantic from offshore Venezuela to the UK in December and January.
The vessel was seized and held off Scotland, but the the captain of the vessel, Georgian national Avtandil Kalandadze, was rendited to the United States along with one other officer, despite legal efforts in the Scottish courts to block his removal from the country.
Mr Kalandadze has now pleaded guilty to refusing to obey US Coast Guard orders in a US court. Disobeying a directive to heave to carries a maximum five-year prison term without aggravating factors, according to the US Attorney's Office.
His sentencing is set for August 7, and prosecutors stated Kalandadze will face deportation upon completing his sentence.
Let’s see how the gavel falls then.
Background reading
You can see more of Semyon Skrepetsky’s satirical art against President Putin (and others) here.
You can read about the experiences of Marinera’s crew whilst under detention in Scotland when the vessel was finally apprehended, here, Russian crew members photographed returning home here, and our full coverage here.
