According to police sources, Germany has formally confiscated the world’s largest superyacht, owned by Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov, as part of sanctions imposed on Moscow following the commencement of the Ukraine conflict.
According to Forbes magazine, the 156-meter (1,680-foot) long “Dilbar” is worth $600 million (555 million euros).
The boat has been parked in a Hamburg shipyard for repairs since October.
German customs had been watching the superyacht for a few weeks but had been unable to detain it due to a legal snafu regarding its ownership.
Eventually, the German Federal Judicial Police announced that they had “identified the owner of the M/S Dilbar, and it is Gulbakhor Ismailova, Alisher Usmanov’s sister, following lengthy investigations and despite concealment via offshore entities.”
European sanctions targeting Russian oligarchs and their families have targeted both the Russian billionaire and his sister.
Usmanov, 68, came in sixth place on the Sunday Times’ list of the UK’s wealthiest persons in 2021.
Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Western sanctions have targeted scores of Russian oligarchs. Everton, an English Premier League football team, announced on Wednesday that it had stopped sponsorship arrangements with numerous companies in which Usmanov has stock.
The “Dilbar” is just the latest in a long line of Russian superyachts seized as a result of Western sanctions.
Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov is a Russian businessman and oligarch who was born in Uzbekistan. Usmanov had a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2022, making him one of the world’s wealthiest people.
Usmanov amassed his fortune after the Soviet Union fell apart, through metal and mining enterprises, as well as investments. He owns a majority stake in Metalloinvest, a Russian industrial conglomerate that merged its assets (Mikhailovsky GOK and Ural Steel) with those of Gazmetall JSC in 2006.
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European Union blacklisted Usmanov on February 28, 2022, imposing an EU-wide travel ban and freezing all of his assets. The US imposed identical penalties on him on March 3, with certain exclusions for his firms. Usmanov was described as a “pro-Kremlin magnate with particularly close relations to Russian President Vladimir Putin [who is] one of Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs” in the Official Journal of the European Union, the EU’s official journal.
In the 1980s, he was sentenced to six years in a Soviet prison for fraud and embezzlement, but his conviction was eventually reversed. The Supreme Court of Uzbekistan eventually rehabilitated him in 2000.
