The government Italian on Friday ordered the police to seize a luxury yacht worth around $700 million that has been linked by the media to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin .
The sleek, six-story Scheherazade had been undergoing repairs at the Italian port of Marina di Carrara since September, but recent activity on the docks suggested the crew could be preparing to return to sea.
A source with direct knowledge of a weeks-long investigation into the ship said police believed the owner to be Eduard Khudainatov, the former head of Russian energy giant Rosneft, who is currently not subject to sanctions from the government. European Union .
In a statement announcing the seizure order, the Finance Ministry did not name the owner, saying only that he had ties to “prominent elements of the Russian government”.
The ministry said the owner himself was not on any sanctions list drawn up by Brussels after the Russian invasion of Ukraine . However, he said Rome had asked Brussels to correct this and had ordered the boat to be seized pending a decision.
Police boarded the yacht on Friday to carry out the order, the Italian government said.
In a speech to the Italian parliament in March, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called on the government to seize the yacht as part of a Europe-wide effort to pressure Putin and his associates to halt the attack on ukraine .
Italy seized property and yachts worth more than €900 million in March and April from wealthy Russians, who regularly came to the country on vacation and bought property in many prestigious locations.
However, police told Reuters they struggled to identify the real owner of the Scheherazade, which is registered in the Cayman Islands and was built by the German company Luerssen.
Delivered to her mysterious owner in 2020, the yacht has two helipads and can accommodate up to 18 guests and 40 crew. An organization created by the prisoner Alexei Navalny a fierce critic of Putin, released a report in March saying he had evidence the boat belonged to Putin.
He said many of his crew were recruited from the Russian Federal Protective Service (FSO), which is tasked with protecting the Russian president.
The Kremlin did not respond at the time to a request for comment on whether Putin was the owner or whether the FSO members were crew members.
Source: CNN Brasil
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