“Dear Madam, Dear Sir,” begins Alice Pontallier, a journalist at Intelligence Online, in what appears to be a courteous email. She writes to inquire about Murat Seitnepesov, the Caspian oil trader with a fraud conviction and a colorful history of unpaid debts and courtroom drama.

She claims to be following up on “ongoing judicial cases” and wants to learn more about the Melars dispute. So far, so journalistically promising.

But what follows is not an investigative exposé—it’s a quiet collapse into passive curiosity, then an abrupt pivot to ad hominem attacks against those doing the actual digging.

From Questions to Inquisition

Instead of probing Seitnepesov’s activities, Pontallier swiftly veers into investigating the investigators:

“May I also know who handles this website?”

“I noticed… your website was set up only at the end of last year… right after the website of your partner company Asset Tracing was updated. Is it possible to know why, and who manages this corporate investigation firm?”

These aren’t questions about court records, money trails, or shady deals. These are questions about domain registration dates.

And then—radio silence.

Until, of course, her “investigation” is published: an article entitled “Dirty tricks in the oil sector: a fake investigations site and a sham corporate intelligence company.”

A Sham? Sounds Familiar

In this new journalistic twist, Pontallier ignores the documented fraud conviction of Seitnepesov, the Melars saga, the Gotham City sentencing report, and the shady shell companies. She instead targets the platforms that published them.

The irony? In February 2023, Intelligence Online had already published a puff piece on Seitnepesov: “Seitnepesov connects Gulf shipping companies to Caspian oil players”. Far from investigating, they lauded his entrepreneurial spirit while apparently ignoring his long history of financial and legal controversy.

You’d think a fraud conviction would warrant a follow-up. Instead, they chose to question the motives of those asking uncomfortable questions.

Friendly Fire or PR Favor?

Let’s connect a few dots:

• A journalist who once praised Seitnepesov now launches an attack on his critics.
• Emails suggest curiosity about lawsuits, but the final article doesn’t mention the most important one—his 2023 Geneva fraud conviction.
• The article’s real target is not Seitnepesov, but those highlighting his misconduct—Research Initiative and its investigative partner AssetTracing.com.

This begins to feel less like investigative journalism and more like a favor to an old friend (business partner?) disguised as reporting. And while we wouldn’t accuse anyone of printing advertorials for free—one does begin to wonder: how much does a favorable article cost these days at Intelligence Online?

The Disappearing Act

Perhaps the most revealing moment in the article comes when Intelligence Online hints that something suspicious happened because AssetTracing.com went offline shortly after being contacted.

Let us clarify what actually happened.

Both AssetTracing and Research Initiative were targeted by sustained DDoS attacks and attempted intrusions in the days following Alice Pontallier’s outreach. These weren’t routine outages or expired domains. These were coordinated efforts to disrupt and dismantle platforms publishing uncomfortable truths—coincidentally right after we exposed a convicted fraudster with long-standing ties in the Caspian shipping world.

So the question isn’t whether the sites “disappeared.”

The question is: who wanted them gone so badly? Would Alice and like to join forces to investigate that?

And how does it feel, we wonder, to sit on that side of the barricade—publicly waving the flag of “investigative freedom” while tacitly cheering as hackers try to silence the other side?

Meanwhile, Intelligence Online continues to operate from its Paris address, proudly reframing a convicted fraudster as a misunderstood entrepreneur, and an investigative team as “shady provocateurs.”

Bravo indeed.

Investigative? No. Convenient? Absolutely.

If Mme Pontallier and her editors had bothered to actually engage with the evidence—or even their own archives—they might have produced a story worth reading. Instead, they gave us a cautionary tale: how not to do journalism.

It’s a curious thing when a reporter asks who owns a website rather than who funded the tanker, who falsified the charter documents, or who benefitted from the DP World deal.

In the end, the only “sham” exposed here isn’t Research Initiative. It’s the hollow brand of investigative credibility at Intelligence Online—built on innuendo, shielded by selective scrutiny, and defended by bylines that fold under the weight of their own contradiction.

If you have any information about Murat Seitnepesov or the companies associated with him, please contact us at support@researchinitiative.org. Your input could greatly assist our ongoing investigation, which is far from over.

Our thanks go to the team at https://AssetTracing.com for their assistance in preparing this investigation

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