Is Roman Abramovich taunting Boris Johnson? Sanctioned oligarch’s £540m superyacht sails within sight of GIBRALTAR before it heads beyond the reach of UK sanctions in Montenegro
Roman Abramovich's £540m super yacht today sailed within two miles of British territorial waters as it continues its 5,900-mile journey beyond the reach of international sanctions.
The Chelsea owner is moving his vessels to a 'safe harbour' in Tivat, Macedonia to avoid being seized. The 55-year-old oligarch, who is worth an estimated £9bn, was this lunchtime disqualified as a director of Chelsea football Club by the premier league.
This morning, fellow oligarch Andrey Melnichenko lost control of his £450 million superyacht Sailing Yacht A after it was seized by Italian police in the Cold War frontier port of Trieste.
Sailing Yacht A is the world's largest sailing yacht and had been sailing around Italy for the past fortnight, having been photographed in Venice on March 5.
Abramovich's yacht Eclipse entered the Straits of Gibraltar around 11am, steaming eastwards at 13 kts through the busy shipping lane. It passed the Rock at 1.30pm, before continuing east along the north African coast. The yacht is expected to arrive in Montenegro on Wednesday.
Roman Abramovich's £540m superyacht Eclipse, pictured off the French coast in July 2019 sailed past Gibraltar at lunchtime today, within two miles of British territorial waters where the vessel could have been seized by the Royal Navy
Abramovich's super yacht Eclipse skirted the Moroccan coast as it past Gibraltar at 1.30pm to avoid Royal Navy patrol vessels
Abramovich, who was today banned as a director at Chelsea Football Club by the Premier League has ordered his two yachts - worth more than £1bn combined - to the port city of Tivat in Macedonia and beyond the reach of international sanctions
HMS Cutlass, pictured, and her sister ship HMS Dasher are based in Gibraltar. The two fast patrol boats can easily catch a the luxury yacht if it strayed into British territorial waters
Abramovich's £430m superyacht Solaris arrived in Tivat, Montenegro at 8am today having left Barcelona on Tuesday. Abramovich moved the yacht out of EU waters fearing he was about to be sanctioned over his links to Vladimir Putin
Roman Abramovich's £430m superyacht Solaris (pictured) docked in Montenegro this morning
Solaris at Barcelona Port in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this month. Staff are said to have been told to tear down scaffolding so the yacht could make a quick getaway
The luxury 460ft vessel arrived just before 8am UK-time in the port of Tivat after hurriedly leaving Barcelona on Tuesday
His smaller yacht, Solaris, arrived in Tivat at 8am having fled from Barcelona on Tuesday where it was undergoing repairs.
Abramovich is not on the EU sanctions list so he can risk his 533ft yacht entering Spanish waters without being seized.
The Royal Navy has two fast patrol boats, HMS Cutlass and HMS Dagger, stationed permanently in Gibraltar.
The 40kt naval vessels can easily outrun Abramovich's luxury yacht, but they cannot intercept the Eclipse unless it strays into British waters.
The Eclipse could be seen from Gibraltar at 1pm, when the skipper altered course slightly to the south to avoid accidently straying into Gibraltar waters.
It left St Maartan in the Caribbean on February 21 - three days before Putin launched his unprovoked attack on Ukraine.
It has sailed across the Atlantic before heading past the Cape Verde islands, Madeira and the North African coast towards its expected destination of Tivat, Montenegro.
The 5,900 mile journey was ordered to move the valuable vessel beyond the reach of international sanctions, after several oligarchs have already seen their superyachts seized by authorities.
Melnichenko's yacht, pictured here on March 5 in Venice, had been cruising along the Golfo Di Venezia when he was added to the EU sanctions list allowing it to be seized by Italian police
The Solaris is not as large as the Eclipse, a 533ft vessel. He has previously owned at least five other colossal yachts, with 162ft Sussurro the most recent to change hands around 2017
Abramovich, according to Downing Street has had a 'close relationship for decades with Putin.
A spokesperson said: 'This association has included obtaining a financial benefit or other material benefit from Putin and the government of Russia.'
But on Thursday, the Government said Abramovich had received financial benefits from the Kremlin, including tax breaks for his companies, the buying and selling of shares from and to the state at favourable rates, and contacts in the run up to the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
According to a statement: 'He is one of the few oligarchs from the 1990s to maintain prominence under Putin.' a statement read.
As well as Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska, an industrialist worth £2 billion who has had close links with the British political establishment, was also targeted, as was Mr Putin's 'right-hand man' Igor Sechin, who is the chief executive of the Rosneft state oil firm.
French authorities seized Sechin's yacht Amore Vero on Thursday, as he was also on the EU sanction list.
The four others freshly hit by sanctions are:
- Andrey Kostin, a 'close associate' of Mr Putin who has 'long supported' the Kremlin as chairman of the sanctioned VTB bank;
- Alexei Miller, the chief executive of state-owned energy giant Gazprom, who is 'one of the most important executives' backing the Kremlin;
- Nikolai Tokarev, who is said to have served as a KGB officer alongside Mr Putin in the 1980s before rising to be president of the Russia state-owned pipeline company Transneft; and
- Dmitri Lebedev, the chairman of the board of directors of the Bank Rossiya, which is considered the 'Kremlin's private bank'.
Abramovich, 55, was sanctioned by the British government on Thursday after officials claimed they could prove links between the oligarch and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The Chelsea owner had always denied links to Putin's regime, but Putin's war in Ukraine has led to a major geopolitical shift.
Abramovich put Chelsea up for sale on March 2, amid Russia's continued invasion of Ukraine, with his ownership set to end after 19 years and 21 trophies. He had pledged to write off the club's £1.5billion debt and plough all sale proceeds into a new charitable foundation to aid victims of the war in Ukraine.
However, at lunchtime today the Premier League Board disqualified Abramovich as a director of the club.
In an official statement, the board said: 'The Board’s decision does not impact on the club’s ability to train and play its fixtures, as set out under the terms of a licence issued by the Government which expires on May 31, 2022.
Abramovich was forced to act to prevent his assets being seized.
Abramovich ordered crew to move his two superyachts, Eclipse and Solaris, before they could be seized under international sanctions. His yacht Solaris arrived in Tivat, Macedonia today at 8am. His larger yacht Eclipse, which passed though the Strait of Gibraltar at lunch time, is expected to arrive in Macedonia on Wednesday
French and Italian authorities last week seized three yachts worth more than £170m on suspicion that they were ultimately owned by associates of Putin.
France detained Amore Vero, a 280ft superyacht said to be owned by Igor Sechin, in the Mediterranean port of La Ciotat.
Sechin, who is also facing sanctions, is the chief executive of the Russian oil producer Rosneft and a close ally of Putin. Amore Vero, which means 'true love' in Italian, can accommodate 14 guests and 28 crew.
French police, who boarded the vessel at night said the crew had been 'making arrangements to leave in a hurry, without having completed the planned work'.
Italian authorities in Samremo impounded Lena, a 134ft yacht owned by Putin associate Gennady Timchenko, who has an estimated $21bn fortune held in Russian raw materials companies.
Lady M, a 209ft yacht owned by Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov who is the main shareholder of Russia's largest steel and mining company, was seized in the nearby Ligurian port of Imperia.
Dilbar, the world's largest superyacht by gross tonnage, which is said to be owned by Everton shareholder Alisher Usmanov, was reported to have been seized in Hamburg.
But German authorities later clarified that the 511ft vessel, which has been valued at $600m, had not been impounded but required an export waiver to leave the port.
Officials in Italy are also probing whether a mysterious superyacht docked in a northern port should be seized under sanctions against Russia, following speculation that it could belong to Vladimir Putin himself.
Italian authorities are currently probing whether the superyacht Scheherazade should be seized under international sanctions. Speculation has circulated that the boat, seen above in August 2020, is owned by Vladimir Putin himself
Currently docked for repairs (above) at the Italian Sea Group shipyard in Marina di Carrara, Italy, the Scheherazade is protected by measures that are extreme even by the ultra-private standards of the superyacht world
The £540 million yacht, Scheherazade, is one of the largest and most expensive superyachts in the world, and since its launch in 2020, its true ownership has been cloaked in absolute secrecy.
Currently docked for repairs at the Italian Sea Group shipyard in Marina di Carrara, Italy, the Scheherazade is protected by measures that are extreme even by the ultra-private standards of the superyacht world, with covers hiding its nameplate and a metal barrier erected to partially block the vessel from public view.
For more than a year, workers at the shipyard have speculated that the ship belongs to Putin himself, a source there told DailyMail.com this week. 'All the whispers were it belonged to Putin,' the person said.
The source said that the Scheherazade's crew appear to be Russian, and that a team of Germans working on repairs to the vessel were recalled by their home office after the EU announced its sanctions last week.
However, the ship's British captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, denied that Putin owns the Scheherazade or has ever been on board, telling the New York Times: 'I have never seen him. I have never met him.'
Italians seize world biggest sailing yacht owned by Russian oligarch Andrey MIlnichenko
Italian police this morning seized a superyacht from Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko, a few days after the businessman was placed on an EU sanctions list following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The 470-foot Sailing Yacht A, which has a price tag of £450m has been sequestered at the northern port of Trieste, the government said.
Trieste was famously included in Winston Churchill's speech of March 5, 1946, where he said 'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent'.
Abramovich's fellow oligarch Andrey Melnichenko had his £450 million vessel Sailing Yacht A seized in Cold War frontier port Trieste this morning. The vessel, pictured this morning, is the world's largest sailing yacht
Designed by Philippe Starck and built by Nobiskrug in Germany, the vessel is the world's biggest sailing yacht, the government said.
Melnichenko owned major fertiliser producer EuroChem Group and coal company SUEK. The companies said in statements on Thursday that he had resigned as a member of the board in both companies and withdrawn as their beneficiary, effective Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Melnichenko, Alex Andreev, said the businessman had 'no relation to the tragic events in Ukraine. He has no political affiliations'.
He said: 'There is no justification whatsoever for placing him on the EU sanctions list.
'We will be disputing these baseless and unjustified sanctions, and believe that the rule of law and common sense will prevail.
Last week Italian police seized villas and yachts worth £120m from five high-profile Russians who have been placed on the sanctions list.
The police operations were part of a coordinated drive by Western states to penalise wealthy Russians they say are linked to President Vladimir Putin.
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