Photo: FEDERICO SCOPPA / AFP / Getty Images
After weeks of investigation, Italian authorities announced Friday night that they had seized a nearly $700 million dollars and said that its owner had “significant economic and commercial ties” with “ leading elements of the Russian government”.
According to US officials, the leading element is not other than the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, according to the New York Times.
In recent days, the Scheherazade, as the huge luxury ship is called, showed signs of being ready to sail, apparently with the aim of leaving before the Italian government could seize it.
But on Friday night, Italian police boarded the yacht, which measures 459 feet tall. argo, has two helicopter decks, a gym and a pool that can be converted into a dance floor, and he told the crew that the ship was going nowhere.
The Italian Ministry of Finance announced that an investigation had established that the ship’s owner, whom it did not name, was an individual who “threatened international peace and security” and that the individual’s actions amounted to ” undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine”.
The ministry also specified the urgency of implementing the restrictions as the reason to freeze the floating and extremely expensive asset.
Italian authorities, which have actively seized villas and yachts belonging to sanctioned Russian oligarchs, said in a communicated that they had taken possession of the ship, which is in the dry dock of the port of Marina di Carrara, on the north coast of Tuscany, in even though the person they had identified as its technical owner did not currently appear on a European sanctions list.
They added that they could not name the person until the European Council published the name, and the Italian government committee tasked with protecting the country’s financial security asked that the person’s name be added to the list.
Italian media have reported for weeks that Eduard Khudainatov, a Russian oil tycoon who is not currently under sanctions, owns the yacht.
Khudainatov is considered to be close to Igor Sechin, a powerful oligarch and close friend of Putin who is currently under sanctions.
Italian financial police officials contacted on Friday night refused to say who they thought was the owner of the ship.
The captain and the president of the Marina di Carrara shipyard, where the Scheherazade underwent repairs and has wintered for two consecutive years, have denied the claims made by the US intelligence service
Construction workers, crew members and locals in the small port point out that the ship unofficially belongs to Putin.
The ship’s captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, recently told The New York Times that its owner was not on the sanctions list, but also denied seeing or meeting Putin on the yacht. However, a former Scheherazade crew member told The New York Times that he had never heard of Khudainatov and confirmed that crew members always believed and argued that the real owner was Putin.
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