The giant superyacht Dilbar spans the length of one and a half football fields, almost as long as a World War I. It has two helipads, berths for over 130 people and a 25-metre long swimming pool large enough to accommodate another entire superyacht.
Dilbar was launched in 2016 at a cost of over $648 million. Five years later, its alleged owner, Kremlin-aligned Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, was already dissatisfied and the ship was shipped to a German shipyard last fall for a retrofit at a cost of another two hundred million dollars. Was.
This is where she lay on the dry dock on Thursday when the United States and the European Union announced economic sanctions against Usmanov – a metals magnate and early investor in Facebook – in retaliation for his ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine. In.
“We’re joining our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets,” President Joe Biden said during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. Huh.” “We are coming for your unfair advantage.”
But actually seizing the behemoth boats can prove challenging. Russian billionaires have decades to defend their wealth and assets in the West from governments that may try to tax them or confiscate them.
Several media outlets reported on Wednesday that Dilbar was confiscated by German authorities. But a spokesman for the Hamburg state economy ministry told The Associated Press that no such action had been taken so far because it was unable to establish ownership of the yacht, which is named after Usmanov’s mother.
Dilbar is marked in the Cayman Islands and registered with a holding company in Malta, two secret banking havens where the global ultra-rich often park their wealth.
Yet, in the industry that caters to the exclusive club of billionaires and millionaires who can buy, crew and maintain superyachts, it is often an open secret who owns.
Working with UK-based yacht valuation firm VesselsValue, the AP compiled a list of 56 superyachts – commonly defined as luxury vessels longer than 24 m (79 ft) – believed to be a few dozen Kremlin-aligned oligarchs, owned by maritime property. With an estimated market value of over $5.4 billion.
The AP then used two online services – VesselFinder and MarineTraffic – to plot the boats’ last known locations as relayed by their onboard tracking beacons.
While many are still anchored in or near sun-splashed playgrounds in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, more than a dozen were already operating in or had arrived in remote ports in smaller countries such as the Maldives and Montenegro. , which were probably beyond the reach of Western sanctions. Three are in Dubai, where many wealthy Russians have homes for vacationing.
Another three had gone dark, their transponders pinging in Turkey just outside the Bosporus – the entrance to the Black Sea and the southern Russian ports of Sochi and Novorossiysk.
Graceful, a German-built Russian-flagged superyacht believed to belong to Putin, left a repair yard in Hamburg on February 7, two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. It is now located in the Russian Baltic port of Kaliningrad, beyond the reach of Western sanctions imposed against it last week.
Some Russian oligarchs seem to have not received the memo to move their superyachts despite public warnings of Putin’s planned invasion.
French authorities confiscated the superyacht Amore Vero in the Mediterranean resort town of La Ciotat on Thursday. The boat is believed to belong to Putin’s aide Igor Sechin, who runs Russian oil giant Rosneft, which has been on the US sanctions list since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The French finance ministry said in a statement that customs officials boarded the 289-foot Amore Vero and learned that its crew was preparing for immediate departure, even though the planned repair work had not been completed. The $120 million boat is registered in a company that lists Sechin as its primary shareholder.
On Saturday, Italian Financial Police seized the 132-foot superyacht Lina, which is flagged off in the British Virgin Islands, in the port of San Remo. Officials said the boat belonged to Gennady Timchenko, an oligarch close to Putin and one of those sanctioned by the European Union. With an estimated net worth of $16.2 billion, Timchenko is the founder of the Volga Group, which specializes in investing in energy, transportation and infrastructure assets.
The 213-foot Lady Am tied up in the port city of Imperia’s Riviera was also confiscated by the Italians. In a tweet announcing the seizure on Friday, a spokesman for Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the comparatively modest $27 million vessel was the property of sanctioned steel baron Alexei Mordashov, listed as Russia’s richest man. with a net worth of approximately $30 billion.
But Mordashov’s upsized yacht, the 464-foot Nord, was safely at anchor on Friday in the Seychelles, a tropical island chain in the Indian Ocean that was not under the jurisdiction of US or EU sanctions. Among the largest superyachts in the world, Nord has a market value of $500 million.
Since Friday, Italy has seized 143 million euros ($156 million) in luxury yachts and villas in some of its most beautiful destinations, including Sardinia, the Ligurian coast and Lake Como.
Most of the Russians on the annual Forbes list of billionaires have yet to be approved by the United States and its allies, and their superyachts are still cruising the world’s oceans. The 237-foot Stella Maris, spotted by an AP reporter last week in Nice, France, is believed to be owned by Russian billionaire oil and gas magnate Rashid Sardarov.
The development of elite yachts goes back to the tumultuous decade following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, as the state’s oil and metals industries were sold at rock-bottom prices, often to politically linked Russian merchants and bankers. To, who had given loan to the new. Russian state in exchange for shares.
Russia’s nouveau wealthy began buying luxury yachts similar in size and expense to those owned by Silicon Valley billionaires, heads of state and royalty. It is a major marker of status in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and size matters.
“No self-respecting Russian elite would be without a superyacht,” said William Brower, an American-born and now London-based financier who spent years in Moscow before becoming one of the most vocal foreign critics of the Putin regime. Work done. “It’s part of the rite of passage to be an elite. It’s just a condition.”
As their fortunes increased, there was an arms race among the elites, the wealthiest of them accumulating private fleets of more opulent yachts.
For example, Russian metal and petroleum magnate Roman Abramovich is believed to have bought or built at least seven of the world’s largest yachts, some of which he sold to other oligarchs.
In 2010, Abramovich launched the Bermuda-flagged Eclipse, which at the time was the world’s tallest superyacht at 533 feet. Amenities include a wood-burning firepit and swimming pool that turns into a dance floor. The Eclipse also has its own helicopter hangar and an undersea bay that reportedly holds a mini-sub.
Dennis Koiser, a superyacht analyst at Vesselfinder, said elite yachts often included covert security measures worthy of a Bond villain, including hatches for underwater escape, bulletproof windows and armored panic rooms.
“The Eclipse missile is equipped with all kinds of special features including launchers and self-defense systems on board,” Kausar said. “It has a secret submarine evacuation zone and things like that.”
The Eclipse was soon taken over by Azam, owned by the Emir of Abu Dhabi, who claimed the title of longest yacht when it launched in 2013. Three years after that, Usmanov launched the Dilbar, which replaced another small yacht of the same name. The new Dilbar is the world’s largest yacht by volume.
Abramovich, whose fortune is estimated at $12.4 billion, fired back last year by launching Solaris. While not as tall as the Eclipse or as big as Dilbar, the $600 million Bermuda-flagged boat is possibly even more spectacular. Eight storeys long, the Solaris boasts a sleek pool of extensive teak-covered decks, perfect for hosting crowds of well-heeled partygoers.
But no boat is top dog for long. At least 20 superyachts are reported to be under construction at various northern European shipyards, with a $500 million superyacht being built for American billionaire Jeff Bezos.
“It’s about the ego,” said Kauser. “They all want the best, the tallest, the most valuable, the newest, the coolest.”
But, he said, US and EU sanctions on Putin-aligned oligarchs and Russian banks have sent a chill through the industry, with boat builders and workers worried they will not be paid. Crew, fuel and maintaining a superyacht can cost upwards of $50 million per year.
The crash of the ruble and the tanking of the Moscow stock market have decimated the fortunes of Russia’s elite, with many people removed from the Forbes billionaires list last week. Coizer said he expects some elite superyachts to soon be quietly listed by brokers at fire-sale prices.
On Thursday, the US Treasury Department issued a new round of sanctions that included a press release that included pictures of Usmanov’s close ties with Putin and Dilbar and the elite private jet, a custom-built 209-foot Airbus A340- 300 passenger liners were involved. The Treasury said Usmanov’s plane was believed to be worth up to $500 million and was named Borkhan after his father.
Usmanov, whose wealth has recently shrunk to nearly $17 billion, criticized the sanctions.
In a statement released via the International Fencing Federation’s website, he said, “I believe that such a decision is unfair and the reasons employed to justify the sanctions are likely to harm my honour, dignity and business reputation.” A set of false and defamatory allegations.” of which he has served as the chairman since 2008.
Abramovich is yet to be approved. Members of the British Parliament have criticized Prime Minister Boris Johnson for not going after Abramovich’s UK-based assets, which include professional football club Chelsea. Under mounting pressure, the oligarch announced last week that it would sell the team for $2.5 billion and give the net proceeds “for the benefit of all victims of the war in Ukraine”.
Meanwhile, location transponders moored Solaris in Barcelona, Spain on Saturday. The eclipse departed St Maarten late Thursday and is moving across the Caribbean Sea, destination unknown.
