The sanctions being imposed on Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich are starting to make some serious waves — and not just at at his west London football club.
This week, the Russian billionaire’s £430million super-yacht was spotted slipping out of a Barcelona port to evade seizure under severe sanctions announced by the US and Europe amid the ongoing Ukraine crisis.
According to reports, the 458ft Solaris (with a helipad and onboard beach club) sailed within two miles of British territorial waters off Gibraltar on its way to a safe harbour in Macedonia.
Solaris is the second of Abramovich’s boats to join a high-stakes new game of cat-and-mouse on the high seas since the Ukraine war broke out.
Eclipse, the biggest beast in his flotilla with a gym, nightclub and rooms for 62 staff, is also on the move from the Caribbean island of St Maarten — the latest in a fleet of Russian billionaires’ boats hastily leaving (mostly European) ports for international waters.
Or so their owners hope. Many oligarchs’ yachts are thought to have already set sail for safer places like the Caribbean or the Maldives, which has no extradition treaty with the US, where billionaire Alexander Abramov’s £76million superyacht reportedly arrived last week from Turkey (Abramov is not on the sanctions list).
Others have not been so lucky. This morning, Italian police confirmed they had seized Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko’s £450million yacht, while Spanish police confirmed the seizure of a £107million boat owned by former KGB officer and arms tycoon Sergei Chemezov in Barcelona.
Last week, France seized an 88-metre yacht linked to sanctioned Russian energy boss Igor Sechin and Germany has reportedly seized the Dilbar, a £450million superyacht owned by sanctioned billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
The super-sized Dilbar has a 25-metre swimming pool, the largest ever on a yacht. Hamburg authorities denied it was confiscated, but its crew were reportedly fired due to US and EU sanctions.
Some yacht watchers have started taking matters into their own hands. Last month, a Ukrainian mechanic in Mallorca was arrested after trying to sink the 157ft £5million Lady Anastasia, owned by the CEO of a Russian arms exporter.
Meanwhile, online, boat tracking site Marine Traffic’s hashtag #YachtWatch is trending among social media users keen to get involved in the search for sanction-dodgers.
“These mega-yachts are a symbol of the hypocrisy of a number of these oligarchs,” said ex-CIA officer Alex Finley, who started the hashtag.
With US officials now reporting that a $700million yacht docked in Italy could be associated with Vladimir Putin himself, the battle of the high seas (seize?) is escalating, fast.
