The luxurious superyacht “Scheherazade”, which is in the shipyards off the Italian coast of Tuscany, is shrouded in mystery, as it could belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Several yachts belonging to Russian tycoons have been seized in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, but seizing the “Shererazade” would certainly be a spectacular coup if it is proven to belong to the Russian leader.
The 140 meter long yacht, valued at 700 million dollars, it’s found
in dry dock near Massa, a luxurious seaside resort in magical Tuscany, a few kilometers from the famous Carrara marble quarries and Forte dei Marmi, one
one of the favorite destinations of Russian billionaires.
(Also: Is Russia headed for a war of attrition with Ukraine?)
Submitted for several months to maintenance in the shipyard of the company The Italian Sea Group, it is almost impossible to approach the boat and no movements are detected on board, said an AFPTV journalist. For Cesare Cucurnia, an 83-year-old retiree, his presence arouses curiosity.
“We don’t know who the owner is. It’s certainly not a poor person. It’s probably Putin,” he says as he walks along the boardwalk. The Italian financial police opened an investigation to clarify whether the yacht belongs to a Russian businessman or even to President Putin himself, whose conclusions will be known
in the next few days, a source close to the case told AFP.
“We are in the deepening phase, in general the most complicated. We study the minutes. It is not always easy to attribute ownership” of a vessel, especially since in many cases they are in the name of figureheads, which makes it difficult to identify the true owner or beneficiary, explained the same source.
Manufactured in 2020 in the German shipyards Lürssen, the yacht has two platforms for helicopters, a swimming pool, a cinema room and an anti-drone battery, according to the administrators of the SuperYachtFan page, who present themselves as journalists specializing in investigations. According to the press, the “Scheherazade”, flying the Cayman Islands flag, belongs to a company registered in the Marshall Islands. Its captain is British, but the rest of the crew was Russian, the team of imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny revealed in a video posted Monday on YouTube, attributing ownership of the megayacht to Vladimir Putin.
According to them, several members of the crew belong to the FSO, an organization in charge of protecting important Russian personalities. For the New York Times, the US authorities have material linking the Russian president with
the luxurious ship, which made two trips, in 2020 and 2021, to the coastal town
from Sochi, on the shores of the Black Sea.
The firm The Italian Sea Group assured that all this is false. “Ownership of ‘Scheherazade’ cannot be attributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin,” he reacted.
in a statement, in which he cites “the documentation in his possession and the results
of the controls carried out by the competent authorities”.
Interviewed by the New York Times, the captain of the “Scheherazade” maintained that he had never seen the Russian president on board, although he refused to reveal the name of the owner, due to the fact that he has a contractual obligation to maintain the reserve. By chance or in a desperate maneuver, the entire crew was replaced
in the last days. “The crew consisted exclusively of Russians. And
Suddenly, the entire crew was replaced by staff with British nationality,” said Paolo Gozzani, general secretary of the CGIL trade union confederation.
of Massa.
In a speech to the Italian parliament, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky He asked Italy for more sanctions against Russian billionaires who spend their vacations in Italy. “We must freeze their properties, their accounts, their yachts, from the ship ‘Scheherazade’ to the smallest. We must freeze the assets of all those who have the power to make decisions in Russia,” he cried. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Italy has confiscated more than 800 million
euros (almost 900 million dollars) in assets belonging to oligarchs thanks to the sanctions decided by the European Union. Among them is the yacht “Sailing Yacht A”
of 530 million euros ($580 million) from billionaire coal and fertilizer tycoon Andrei Melnichenko.
Italy also seized the 65 million euro (71 million euro) yacht “Lady M Yacht”.
dollars) belonging to Alexei Mordashov, considered close to Vladimir
Putin.
AFP
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