![]() ![]() The database lists mansions, superyachts, private planes, and other property, so far totaling about $17.5 billion. The journalists say they are focusing on “a new generation of wealthy men obedient to Putin”-many of whom are now under Western sanctions and whose funds Western governments believe are crucial to funding the Ukraine war. It publishes its “ Russian Asset Tracker” in Russian, English, and Spanish. In that, Navalny’s team has joined forces with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, or OCCRP, a Sarajevo-based group of investigative journalists, to create a database of oligarch wealth. Believed to be linked to Putin, that superyacht is thought to be worth $100 million.īut untangling ownership details, and pinpointing them to Putin, will be immensely complicated. ![]() Last month, the vessel Graceful made a hurried departure from its berth in Hamburg as the EU was drafting tough new sanctions just days before Putin sent Russian tanks into Ukraine. The Scheherazade, in fact, might not be Putin’s only superyacht. ![]() The assets include a $1.3 billion mansion on the Black Sea, funded through a Russian health project in which Putin allies were vastly overpaid for medical supplies. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 that Putin’s inner circle of oligarchs split their billions 50-50 with the Russian president. Western governments face a daunting task in tracking down Putin’s true wealth, which could amount to some $200 billion, according to financier Bill Browder, who told the U.S. And on Monday, the 460-foot superyacht Solaris, owned by the sanctioned billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich, was spotted parked in the harbor of Bodrum, Turkey that country has not implemented sanctions. Spanish officials impounded two more yachts, including the Crescent, a 443-foot superyacht also thought to belong to Sechin.Īnother boat, owned by former KGB agent Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, was stranded in Norway when no one would sell it fuel. French police seized a $120 million vessel allegedly owned by Igor Sechin, head of the Russian oil giant Rosneft, on the Mediterranean coast earlier this month. Superyachts have been one of the most visible signs of Russian oligarchs’ mammoth wealth-and, recently, one of the most often seized. If that hunch is correct, it would be subject to immediate seizure under U.S., U.K., and European Union sanctions. The group obtained the all-Russian crew list for the yacht, and found that almost all of them were employed by Putin’s security detail, the Federal Protective Service, known by its Russian acronym FSO.īut Navalny’s group says the crew’s employment status suggests that the Russian leader owns the vessel. “Watch the video, and you will find out how Putin owns this yacht through figureheads, and how we can take this yacht away from him.” “On paper, it belongs to no one, and sits quietly in an Italian port,” the video says in Russian. But on Monday, the group headed by jailed Russian activist Alexis Navalny claimed in a YouTube video that the vessel belongs to Putin himself. “Belongs to no one”įor weeks, there have been questions about who owns the superyacht, which is registered in the Cayman Islands through a shell company. At about 459 feet long, it has six levels of decks, two helipads with a hidden helicopter hangar, a spa, huge living room and dining room, a swimming pool and three saunas, as well as an upper-level “owner’s area” that includes its own private spa. ![]() The yacht, currently moored in the Marina di Carrara on Italy’s Tuscany coast, is gargantuan, even by the outsize dimensions of Russian oligarchs’ superyachts. Scheherazade is also President Vladimir Putin’s $700 million superyacht, according to Russian investigative journalists-and its ability to survive being seized by Western governments will require far more cunning than storytelling. ![]()
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