If he wins, the Italians will have to pay

One of the first measures that the US and Europe adopted when the war in Ukraine broke out was to confiscate the assets of Russian oligarchs all over the world. This included the blocking of bank accounts and funds, mansions located in European countries and, of course, also all those superyachts that were moored in ports around the world.

What at first seemed a succulent booty which was to be used to cover Ukraine’s support and defense costs, soon became a poisoned candy for the countries that had seized them for the enormous expense that it entailed keep them afloat.

An example is found in the impressive Sailing Yacht Aby Russian tycoon Andrey Melnichenko, who has been stranded since March 2022 in the port of Trieste. Italy seized it as a measure of pressure, and four years later, the accumulated bill is close to 47 million dollars. Now, Melnichenko has decided to sue the country who has been paying for yacht maintenance and, if the lawsuit wins, he can take the boat and maintenance for free.

That millionaire you told me about

He Sailing Yacht A is considered as the largest private sailing boat in the world and, for four years, it has become the most famous in Trieste, where it acts as unintentional tourist attraction for visitors to the small town in northeastern Italy.

At 143 meters in length and its avant-garde design, its appearance is closer to that of a futuristic submarine with sails than to a conventional superyacht. Its owner paid some 600 million dollars. The legal problem is that the ship, technically, it’s not Melnichenko’s.

As usually happens in these cases, the Sailing Yacht A It is not registered directly to de Melnichenko, but is owned by a Bermuda-based company called Valla Yachts, which in turn owns it within a trust (corporate asset management instrument) managed by a Swiss company.

In May 2024, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR) suspended its own trial and asked the EU Court of Justice to clarify something basic: can an asset be frozen when it is in the hands of a trust, not the one directly sanctioned? The European court said yes: It is compatible with European law to freeze these assets, as long as it is demonstrated that the sanctioned party has real control over them or effective access to their resources.

The beneficiary of this trust is Aleksandra Melnichenko, the wife of the Russian tycoon. For Italy and the EU, this corporate network also ends with the Melnichenkos. As and how he published the italian Il GazzettinoFor the Melnichenko family’s lawyers, the yacht belongs to a legitimate and independent corporate structure, so the blockade on it had to be lifted since it was not proven that the sailboat is actually Melnichenko’s property.

Maintaining a yacht is not cheap

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the EU and its allies immediately reacted by imposing sanctions on the core of millionaires close to Putin. One of the most spectacular maneuvers It was the seizure of yachts, to send a clear message to the Russian power circle: touch their pockets. The problem is that no one stopped to think about the consequences of those confiscations and the expenses that those assets were going to cause them.

Keeping a luxury superyacht afloat costs money. Big money. According to the most conservative estimates, the cost of annual maintenance of a yacht It is 10% of its purchase value. That is, if a yacht costs 500 million, the 10% rule It already anticipates that the annual maintenance expense will be about 50 million dollars a year.

It is true that this calculation is based on a yacht that is used, but even when the yacht remains immobilized in a port, the expense account does not stop running. They know it well on the Caribbean island of Antigua, where the US authorities ordered the seizure of Alpha Black attributed to Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev.

During its stay in port, the yacht consumed a whopping $2,000 a day only on fuel necessary to keep the air conditioning running to prevent sea salt from damaging the materials and wood inside the yacht.

If they did not sell the yacht, already complicated for legal purposes due to not knowing with certainty the identity of its true owner, it would be almost impossible. And returning it is not an option either because it would be a political defeat against Russia.

In the case of Sailing Yacht AItaly appointed the Agenzia del Demanio to manage the ship. According to Reutersthe maintenance costs in these cases are borne by the State, which You can claim them later from the owner or recover them by selling the yacht. But to sell the largest sailboat in the world buyers are needed who are willing to embark on a long judicial process and who have enough assets to buy it…and those are not plentiful.

So the mayor of Trieste has been wondering out loud Who is going to pay the 30,000 euros a day that it is costing them to maintain the Sailing Yacht A afloat. According to the specialized portal, Megayacht News The yacht will remain in Trieste and the maintenance costs will continue to be covered by the Italian treasury.

The lawsuit may take months, or years, to resolve. If the Italian justice finally decides that the sanctions against the Sailing Yacht Athe Russian millionaire will be able to sail on it again and Italy will have paid him four years of maintenance free.

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Image | Flickr (Paul Fenton, adrianovero), Wikimedia Commons (Maximo Marmur)