A superyacht thought to be owned by an already-sanctioned Russian oligarch was detained by Spanish authorities on Wednesday, it has been reported.
The £458m vessel, named Crescent, belongs to Igor Sechin, who heads up Russia’s oil giant Rosneft, a police source in Spain told Reuters. At 135 metres long, experts said it is one of the world’s biggest and most luxurious of its kind.
It was docked in the port of Tarragona, Catalonia, when officials took action, Spain’s Transport Ministry is quoted as saying. According to the monitoring site Marine Traffic, the boat arrived in Spain from Italy in November last year and is registered in the Cayman Islands.
Mr Sechin, a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, was one of many Russian billionaires sanctioned by the European Union on 28 February – including having all his assets in the bloc frozen.
The UK followed suit on 10 March, hitting the oil tycoon with asset freezes and travel bans over his supposed ties to the Kremlin. It was the same day the UK government sanctioned Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, imposing the same restrictions on him as they did Mr Sechin, throwing his west London-based Premier League club into disarray.
Spain’s decision is the latest in a series of seizures designed to punish those thought to be affiliated with Putin, after the Russian leader launched his deadly invasion of Ukraine last month.
Just five days ago, a £530m yacht owned by Andrey Melnichenko, another oligarch, was seized by Italian authorities. The vessel, called “SY A”, had been in storage at the northeastern port of Trieste, a statement from Italy’s financial police said.
In fact, the Crescent is not even the first boat owned by Mr Sechin to be intercepted by European police since sanctions were put in place. On 3 March, France impounded the Amore Vero, an 86m superyacht, in a night-time operation as it attempted to escape measures already in effect.
The crew were reportedly rushing to cast off from a shipyard at La Ciotat, on the outskirts of Marseilles, where it was undergoing repairs, when a squad of customs officers boarded her and announced the seizure. The yacht, which includes a swimming pool that turns into a helipad, had been due to stay there until late April.
Five such yachts, which have long been a symbol of the extraordinary wealth accrued by oligarchs, have been seized by European governments in total.
As reported by The Independent this week, detaining the ships is the easy part – it is what comes next that sees officials fall into unknown territory. Under current laws across most of Europe, for a government to actually take ownership of any asset, it would have to be able to prove that the particular asset in question was either used as part of a crime or bought with the proceeds of illegal activity.
Trying to tie a superyacht to clear evidence of criminality in Russia would appear almost impossible, experts have said.
However, it remains an easy and efficient way for countries sanctioning Russia to create difficulty for Putin and his cronies, and is expected to continue as the war rages on.
Mr Sechin is considered one of the most influential oligarchs, not only because Rosneft is one of the world’s largest crude oil producers, but because he is thought to work in direct collaboration with the Russian state.
His loyalty to Putin runs deep, too. In 1999, Mr Sechin became deputy head of the president’s cabinet; in 2008, he was named deputy prime minister; and in 2012, he was moved to be CEO of Rosneft.
The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.
