The $300 million superyacht owned by Russian oligarch Suleyman Kerimov was seized Thursday by Fijian authorities on behalf of the United States as part of the ongoing efforts to sanction and punish Russia’s elite in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
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The Justice Department announced that Fiji executed a seizure warrant on the Amadea, a 348-foot-long luxury vessel that authorities say was “subject to forfeiture based on probable cause of violations of U.S. law.” Kerimov, one of Russia’s wealthiest individuals, who built his fortune in gold mining and is a political ally of Putin’s, has been identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as an official of the government of the Russian Federation and a member of the Russian Federation Council.
Amadea was owned by Kerimov at the time of his sanctioning by the United States, Britain and the European Union in early March, authorities say in the seizure warrant, and U.S. financial transactions were routed through U.S. banking institutions by him and associates of his for maintenance of the vessel. Kerimov is among the Russian oligarchs who have been sanctioned during Russia’s war in Ukraine for profiting “from the Russian government through corruption and its malign activity around the globe,” according to the Justice Department.
“Last month, I warned that the department had its eyes on every yacht purchased with dirty money,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco wrote in a statement. “This yacht seizure should tell every corrupt Russian oligarch that they cannot hide, not even in the remotest part of the world. We will use every means of enforcing the sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war in Ukraine.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland echoed Monaco’s sentiments on Russian oligarchs, saying, “There is no hiding place for the assets of individuals who violate U.S. laws.”
“And there is no hiding place for the assets of criminals who enable the Russian regime,” he said in a statement.
Nikita Sichov, a lawyer in Cannes, France, whose firm represents Kerimov, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Feizal Haniff, a lawyer representing Millemarin Investments, the company to which the luxury ship is registered, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Haniff has argued in court in Fiji that Amadea’s owner is not Kerimov but Eduard Khudainatov, a former executive at Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, who is not under sanction, according to CBS News.
Putin allies have tried to find safe waters for their superyachts during the war. In March, the French Finance Ministry announced it had seized the Amore Vero, the $120 million, 281-foot-long superyacht owned by the Russian oligarch Igor Sechin. Other yachts owned by Russian oligarchs have been docked around the world, and some have been on the move to avoid being detained or seized.
In announcing the freeze of the yacht, known as the Scheherazade, on Friday, Italy’s finance ministry said the vessel’s owner had “prominent” links with Russians already under European Union sanctions. The name of the owner was not specified, and Italy only said its government had asked the E.U. to add the person to its sanctions list.
The move comes after Italian investigators had raced to investigate the vessel and prevent it from leaving the Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara, where the yacht had been undergoing repairs since before the war.
In March, an investigation by the Italian daily La Stampa named the boat’s owner as Khudainatov. But the newspaper also raised a question about how somebody not listed as a billionaire could afford to purchase one of the world’s most luxurious yachts.
Investigators working for jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny say the yacht’s owner is Putin himself. In March, Navalny’s team published what it said was the crew list of people who had worked on the yacht. They purportedly include members of the Russian state agency responsible for Putin’s personal protection.
Italy had earlier frozen a $560 million megayacht connected to Andrey Melnichenko, a coal and fertilizer tycoon who is one of Russia’s 10 richest people. Italy has also frozen villas that oligarchs use as summer getaways.
As part of a $33 billion spending package unveiled last week that would provide military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, President Biden proposed liquidating the seized assets of Russian oligarchs and donating the proceeds to Ukraine. The president’s proposal would require broad new legal powers, but Biden suggested that he saw a powerful symbolism in the move.
“We’re going to seize their yachts, their luxury homes and other ill-begotten gains,” he said.
The White House did not release details of the proposal but noted that it would improve the government’s ability to send seized funds to Ukraine. Under current law, the United States typically can only freeze — not seize or liquidate — the assets of sanctioned individuals. Russian officials have vowed to retaliate against the White House move and have urged the affected oligarchs to take legal action.
Considerable hurdles remain for the United States in effecting sanctions on Russian oligarchs. Gaping holes in wire transactions — which now reside in a database maintained by the Treasury Department — underscore how difficult it is to locate, let alone freeze, Russian-connected assets that have been moved into offshore accounts over the past decade.
Kerimov, 56, was listed by Forbes as Russia’s richest man two years ago, but his fortune has shrunk since then. Nevertheless, it remains considerable at about $13 billion, according to Forbes.
Amadea, which was built in 2016 by the German shipyard Lürssen, can accommodate 18 guests and 36 crew members, and its amenities include a large swimming pool, a Jacuzzi, a helicopter landing platform and a winter garden on the sun deck, according to Superyacht Fan, a website tracking luxury yachts.
Kerimov was first put under sanctions by the United States in 2018. Britain and the E.U. followed suit last month as part of a global crackdown in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The seizure of the superyacht was coordinated through the Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, which is dedicated to enforcing the sweeping sanctions, export controls, and economic countermeasures imposed by the United States and its allies, authorities say. Sometime after the yacht docked in Lautoka, Fiji, in April, local authorities, with a “mutual legal assistance request from the United States,” obtained a domestic seizure warrant from the Fijian court, according to the Justice Department.
Andrew Adams, the director of Task Force KleptoCapture, celebrated what he described as an “unprecedented, multinational series of enforcement actions against the Russian regime and its enablers.”
“This seizure of Suleiman Kerimov’s vessel, the Amadea, nearly 8,000 miles from Washington, D.C., symbolizes the reach of the Department of Justice as we continue to work with our global partners to disrupt the sense of impunity of those who have supported corruption and the suffering of so many,” Adams said in a statement.
Greg Miller, Bryan Pietsch, Missy Ryan, Jeff Stein, Matt Viser, Chico Harlan and Spencer Woodman contributed to this report.
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