A view shows the multi-million-dollar mega yacht Scheherazade, docked at the Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)The stunning Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara has long been the parking spot of choice for the global elite’s superyachts but there is one vessel that stands out leaving all others in its shade.
The Scheherazade, said to be worth $700m (£528m), complete with two helipads a spa and a swimming pool that can transform into a dancefloor, is under investigation by Italian authorities for potential links to sanctioned Russians - with speculation mounting it could belong to President Putin himself.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky used an address in Italian Parliament on Tuesday to namecheck the Scheherazade and urged politicians to seize the yacht and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russians.
“Don’t be a resort for murderers,” he begged. “Lock all their real estate, accounts and yachts – from the Scheherazade to the smallest ones.”
The Scheherazade contains gold plated toilets and bathroom fittings, a cryotherapy chamber in the spa and six-deck floors - described as being like two apartment blocks stacked on top of each other.
On the upper deck, as former deckhands told jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s team, there is a giant living room, dining room, two VIP cabins and a mechanical piano, which plays itself.
The tune is said to be from a famous 2014 song titled ‘Vladimir Putin is a Fine Fellow’.
It flies under the flag of the Cayman Islands, according to the tracking service Marine Traffic, and has been moored in Marina di Carrara since early September after arriving from Montenegro across the Mediterranean.
But even the superyacht’s British captain Guy Bennett-Pearce’s denials that Putin has anything to do with the luxury vessel, one of the most expensive of its kind in the world, hasn’t dampened down speculation amongst locals and dock workers.
He told The New York Times: “I have never seen him. I have never met him.”
Mr Bennett-Pearce told the publication he could not give further details because of a “watertight” non-disclosure agreement but he insisted the owner was not on any sanctions list.
The team of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny said in a video on its YouTube channel on March 21 that all crew members, except the captain, are Russian citizens, and many of them are employed by the Federal Protection Service (FSO), the agency responsible for Putin’s personal security.
According to Navalny’s team, the 140-metre long superyacht was made in Germany in 2020.
According to the New York Times, the yacht travelled to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi twice, once in 2020 and again in 2021. It is known that Putin regularly visits his residence in Sochi.
If the yacht’s connection to Putin is proven, it will be impounded, as Putin is currently under sanctions from the European Union over Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The name Scheherazade is a girl’s name of Arabic origin meaning “noble lineage“.
Scheherazade - or Sheherazade -is also the name of a legendary Persian queen immortalised as the narrator the One Thousand and One Nights stories that include Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp.
