The superyacht Dilbar stretches one-and-a-half football fields in length. It has two helipads, berths for more than 130 people and a 25m swimming pool that itself can accommodate another superyacht.
Dilbar was launched in 2016 at a reported cost of more than US$648 million. It was in drydock on Thursday when the US and EU announced economic sanctions against its purported owner, Alisher Usmanov — a metals magnate and early investor in Facebook — over his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and in retaliation for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Seizing the behemoth boats could prove challenging. Russian billionaires have had decades to shield their money and assets in the West from governments that might try to tax or seize them.
Photo: AP
Several media outlets last week reported that German authorities had impounded the Dilbar.
However, a spokeswoman for Hamburg state’s economy ministry told The Associated Press (AP) no such action had yet been taken, because it had been unable to establish ownership of the yacht.
Dilbar is flagged in the Cayman Islands and registered to a holding company in Malta, banking havens where the global ultra-rich often park their wealth.
Working with the UK-based yacht valuation firm VesselsValue, the AP compiled a list of 56 superyachts believed to be owned by a few dozen Kremlin-aligned oligarchs.
Many are anchored in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, but more than a dozen were under way or had already arrived in remote ports in small nations, such as the Maldives and Montenegro, potentially beyond the reach of Western sanctions. Three had gone dark, their transponders last pinging just outside the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey — gateway 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, Germany, on Feb. 7, two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. It is now moored in the Russian Baltic port of Kaliningrad, beyond the reach of Western sanctions imposed against him this past week.
French authorities seized the superyacht Amore Vero on Thursday in the Mediterranean resort town of La Ciotat. The boat is believed to belong to Igor Sechin, a Putin ally who runs Russian oil giant Rosneft.
The 64m Lady M was seized by Italian authorities on Friday while moored in the Riviera port town of Imperia.
A spokesman for Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the yacht was the property of sanctioned steel baron Alexei Mordashov, listed as Russia’s wealthiest man with a fortune of about US$30 billion.
However, Mordashov’s 141m Nord was safely at anchor on Friday in the Seychelles.
Russian metals 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 has since sold off to other oligarchs.
Dennis Cauiser, a superyacht analyst with VesselsFinder, said the sanctions on Putin-aligned oligarchs and Russian banks have sent a chill through the industry, with boatbuilders and staff worried they would not be paid.
It can cost upward of US$50 million a year to crew, fuel and maintain a superyacht.
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