The cat and mouse chase game of Russian billionaires and their superyachts refuses to relinquish momentum. Dilbar superyacht, the $800 million asset of sanctioned billionaire Alisher Usmanov, has been moored in Hamburg since its seizure. German authorities of the Federal Criminal Police Office impounded the 500-footer in the port of Hamburg, taking away from the early Facebook investor one of his most prized possessions. Since its capture, the vessel hasn’t moved an inch; it was even completely covered for a while, perhaps for a new paint job.
The current location of the 500-feet Dilbar luxury vessel on the ship tracking website Marine Traffic is someplace in Sardinia, and it is certainly not a marina. The only action witnessed concerning motoryacht Dilbar was owing to its AIS tousling up its current location. The possibility of the world’s largest megayacht (by volume) flaunting 3,800 square meters of living space docking on a locked space in Sardinia is negligible.
Not only does it defy logic, but there is enough evidence in the form of a live view of the Port of Hamburg, where the majestic motoryacht is spotted in all her glory.
According to eSysman SuperYachts, the same thing happened with the superyacht Predator, which was also shown as located in Sardinia. While other trackers continue to show Dilbar’s location as Hamburg, this news, if it reached Usmanov, would’ve given him quite the shake. After all, when it came to his sailing monument, even Russia’s leading billionaires, worth $17.9 billion, didn’t shy away from pleading with the European courts to suspend the harsh sanctions so he could get his seized $800 million megayacht Dilbar back.
The Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov’s pleas went unanswered:
Alisher Usmanov, who owes most of his wealth to metal and mining operations and investments, tried to get back his megayacht in April. The oligarch filed an appeal at the EU’s General Court on April 29, asking the bloc’s second-highest tribunal to suspend the sanctions until judges decide. For Usmanov it was heartbreaking to lose such an asset like Dilbar, three times the length of an Olympic swimming pool with two helipads, a garden, and many amenities. Usmanov failed to demonstrate a direct causal link between the financial situation of the subsidiaries and his inclusion on the EU’s sanctions list, and his legal appeal got rejected.
EuropeanSanctions.com stated, ‘The Court said that the application did not demonstrate urgency / serious irreparable harm as Mr. Usmanov had relied only on the damage that relates to the financial viability of 3 subsidiaries of USM in which he retains a 49% share and therefore does not control.” It can’t be ignored that a triumph for Usmanov would open the floodgates for other billionaires who would follow suit relentlessly, trying every trick in the book to win their beloved pleasure crafts back.
