File this under “I didn’t see that coming.” The cost of seizing the luxury superyachts of the doughy, middle-aged Russian oligarchs is expensive.
This past week, Fiji gave the U.S. the green light to capture and seize the $325 million big boat owned by Suleiman Kerimov, an oligarch who made his billions in the gold business. Fiji held on to the ship until it could be proven it belonged to the Russian, allowing the FBI to board the vessel and take it over.
While Russian oligarchs are quite skilled at drinking expensive champagne, buying toys that cost millions of dollars, and avoiding cardio workouts at all costs, they aren’t great at hiding evidence. Once the FBI got onboard, they noticed documents that linked Kerimov to illegal activity in the United States. Here’s some official wording from the Justice Department;
“[causing] dollar transactions to be routed through U.S. financial institutions for the support and maintenance of the Amadea.”
Translation; wire fraud.
It’s now locked behind guarded gates at a private wharf in the South Pacific, according to autoevoltion.com. The next step is for the U.S. Justice Department to sail that sucker to American waters so they can sell it at auction. Hopefully, it will be soon because the cost to maintain that yacht is $25 to $30 million per year, which the U.S. Government will be on the hook for until it’s sold.
That’s a couple million a month of taxpayers’ dollars.
The post Sailing On The Open Seize. The Cost Of Seizing Oligarch’s Yachts Is $25- $30 Million Per Year, Per Boat, For U.S. Taxpayers. appeared first on VTPost.com.
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