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Exclusive: 140m Lurssen superyacht 'Project Lightning' delivered and named SCHEHERAZADE

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By Katia Damborsky   1 June 2020

Still officially known as 'Project Lightning' the 140m (459ft) motor yacht SCHEHERAZADE  has been delivered and is currently undertaking her maiden voyage to Norway . 

First hitting the water in 2019, Project Lightning has now been delivered as  SCHEHERAZADE .

According to AIS tracking data, she left Lurssen's facilities in Bremen yesterday and is currently en route to Kristiansand, on Norway's southern coast. It comes after the 10,167 GT motor yacht  underwent her first round of sea trials in August 2019. 

Lurssen has kept all details about their fifth-largest superyacht delivery under wraps. It is being reported that the yacht's exterior styling comes from Espen Oeino, but this has not been confirmed by the yard. 

View this post on Instagram Lights on for the 130m+ @luerssenyachts Project Lightning. Photo by @tomvanoossanen A post shared by Tom van Oossanen (@tomvanoossanen) on Jun 1, 2020 at 2:30am PDT

Key design features of the six-deck superyacht include a pair of helipads- one on the foredeck and one on the aft deck. She also has impressive underwater lightning and high-volume interiors that allow for plenty of indoor spaces for relaxation and entertainment. 

Lurssen is on track for a busy 2020, with other deliveries including the 142m (466ft) motor yacht OPUS (or 'Project Redwood') scheduled for later this year. The yard also recently sent 87m superyacht 'Project Hawaii'  out on sea trials, signalling promising activity and good progress for Northern European shipyards amid the Coronavirus crisis.

The name Scheherazade comes from an Arabic term meaning "world-freer". In literature, Scheherazade is a legendary Arabic queen immortalized as the narrator of all one thousand stories in the 'One Thousand and One Nights'.

At 10,167 GT Scheherazade is believed to be the 6th largest Lurssen superyacht ever delivered. The largest Lurssen-built superyacht in terms of GT is 156m megayacht Dilbar with a GT of 15,917. At 139.29, Al Salamah has a larger volume of 12,234 GT.

It is not yet known whether M/Y SCHEHERAZADE will become available for superyacht charters .

You can view and compare all Lurssen superyachts for charter .

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The 140m/459ft mega yacht SCHEHERAZADE (ex Project Lightning) was launched in 2019 and built at Lurssen shipyard in Germany. She is one of the largest yachts in the world. Her exterior profile was designed by Espen Oeino. With a beam of 23.28m/76.5ft, she features 10,167GT of internal volume with plenty of room to socialise and relax.

NOTABLE FEATURES OF SCHEHERAZADE: ~ Two helipads ~ Jacuzzi ~ Beach club ~ Several dining areas

She was built with a displacement hull and aluminium superstructure.

SCHEHERAZADE Specifications

There is no information about the interiors.

As with all Lurssen mega yachts, details on mega yacht SCHEHERAZADE remain scarce.

Yacht Accommodation

We do have available further accommodation information for yacht SCHEHERAZADE, so please enquire for more information.

Amenities and Extras

We do have available further amenity, owner and price information for the 140m (459'4") yacht SCHEHERAZADE, so please enquire for more information.

SCHEHERAZADE Disclaimer:

The luxury yacht SCHEHERAZADE displayed on this page is merely informational and she is not necessarily available for yacht charter or for sale, nor is she represented or marketed in anyway by CharterWorld. This web page and the superyacht information contained herein is not contractual. All yacht specifications and informations are displayed in good faith but CharterWorld does not warrant or assume any legal liability or responsibility for the current accuracy, completeness, validity, or usefulness of any superyacht information and/or images displayed. All boat information is subject to change without prior notice and may not be current.

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A $700 million superyacht linked to Putin was seized in Italy last year. It's being treated to a refurb while it waits, and authorities won't say who's paying for it.

• Scheherazade, a $700 million superyacht linked to Russian President Putin, is being refitted in Italy.
• Italy seized the yacht in 2022 following sweeping sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine war.
• The unnamed owner of the yacht is paying for the vessel's staff, maintenance, and refit.

A $700 million superyacht linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin is sitting in an Italian port and being refitted on the unnamed owner's dime, the Financial Times reports .

Italy seized the Scheherazade superyacht in  May last year but allowed its unnamed sanctioned owner to continue paying for the vessel's staff, maintenance, and a refit while it sits in the Tuscan port of Marina di Carrara, the FT reported.

The 459-foot, four-year-old vessel features six floors, two helipads, a swimming pool, a beauty salon, and gold-plated bathrooms, reported by the FT and an Insider report .

It's now being refurbished by the Milan-listed Italian Sea Group, which confirmed the refit to the FT. The company declined to provide further details — including ownership — to the media outlet.

People with knowledge of the matter told the FT that the owner of the Scheherazade yacht is Eduard Khudainatov, the sanctioned former CEO of the Russian state oil company Rosneft.

However, the oligarch is merely the "straw owner" of the vessel,  Bloomberg  reported in May last year.

US authorities believe the superyacht could  belong to Putin ,  The New York Times  reported in March last year. 

Two activists working with the imprisoned Putin opponent Alexey Navalny claimed last March that some of the ship's crew members were from a Russian state agency responsible for protecting Putin. The FT reported that the Kremlin denied these allegations.

The Scheherazade is one of the  many luxury assets that have been seized by the West following sweeping sanctions against Russia over the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that started in February 2022. Other yachts linked to Russian oligarchs that have been seized include the $81 million Alfa Nero  and the  $48 million Phi .

The Kremlin and Italian Sea Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.

Watch: The rise and fall of Russian oligarchs

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Video: 12th largest yacht in world 140m Lürssen Scheherazade captured in new footage

The 12th largest yacht in the world, the 140 metre Lürssen yacht named  Scheherazade , has been captured underway in new never-before-seen footage. 

Video courtesy of Carlo Demicheli | @boatfromtheworld

It comes after the superyacht, which was previously known as  Project Lightning , first hit the water in July 2019, promptly taking its place among the largest 25 superyachts in the world. 

Scheherazade 's Espen Øino-designed exterior features a four-deck aluminium superstructure, two large helipads – one at the bow and one on the upper deck – plus a prominent beach club aft.

With the owner known to be a Middle-Eastern billionaire, this yacht is designed with warmer climates in mind and has relatively little exterior space for a yacht of this size.

There is limited covered deck space at the aft end of the main and upper decks, but it is well enclosed by glass sides for cooling. Even the sundeck is completely shaded by a hardtop, which all helps to give the yacht a huge 10,167 GT internal volume.

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Scheherezade

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Scheherezade (ex Project Lightning) was launched in 2019 by German-run shipbuilder Lurssen.

Although official details are yet to be confirmed, Scheherezade (ex Project Lightning) is believed to measure 140 metres and therefore place as the world's 12th largest yacht.

As can be expected, there is little we can tell our readers for certain about the specifications and details of this enormous vessel, except that she dons a typically striking naval architecture and exterior design.

She is also fitted with an exceptional two helipads, forward and aft, as can be viewed from the latest photos of her reveal.

Notably, Scheherezade (ex Project Lightning) was German giant Lurssen's 10th yacht in the world top 20 upon launch.

Lurssen has remained a family-run German shipyard since its inception in 1875 and is now in its fourth generation of private ownership. The company was founded by Friedrich Lurssen with a desire to create a leading shipyard in both quality and performance.

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How This Superyacht Became an Overnight Geopolitical Mystery

The Russia sanctions are growing, seemingly by the hundreds, every day. And much of the world is watching with glee as oligarchs’ luxuries are being hunted down by international governments. If we’ve learned anything from movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, which is based on a true story, it’s that some of the world’s wealthiest enjoy flaunting their money. Not only do billionaires often spend their money on toys like European sports cars and diamond-encrusted watches, but they also want the world to know to whom these extremely rare possessions belong. 

After all, Jeff Bezos has been accumulating quite a bit of press as he works on dismantling a historic bridge in Rotterdam to sail his $500 million yacht onto the open sea. But some billionaires play their cards a bit closer to the chest. Case in point: the owner of a 459-foot superyacht docked in a Tuscan port. No one, not even the Italian police, can identify who the enormous vessel belongs to, which leads the world to believe it may be someone tied to one of the world’s most currently despised leaders: Vladimir Putin.

Scheherazade , which costs an estimated $700 million, boasts not one but two helicopter decks. 

Few believe that the floating mansion actually belongs to the Russian president—whose recent invasion of Ukraine is earning more sanctions than he, his country, and his billionaire friends thought imaginable—but many are more certain that it belongs to someone with ties to the top of the Russian government.

Since the devastating fate of Ukraine started to unfold, the United States, along with the UK and the European Union, have come together to track down the luxuries belonging to Putin’s friends, who are part of a massively growing list of billionaires facing punishing sanctions. That’s why this boat, one of the world’s largest and costliest, is such a point of interest.

International governments have been going after the luxurious belongings of Russian oligarchs since Putin and his government started getting slapped with sanctions two weeks ago, so assuming the yacht hiding out in Italy is one of Putin’s friend’s, things aren’t looking so good. However, no one can confirm just yet. The ship’s British captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, promised that Putin had never been on the boat and that it didn’t belong to him, but he didn’t confirm whether or not the yacht belonged to a Russian national.

Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Considering all of the amenities on the boat, dubbed Scheherazade , it’s not exactly an unfair guess to assume the owner is a Russian oligarch. Scheherazade , which costs an estimated $700 million, boasts not one but two helicopter decks, an indoor swimming pool with a retractable cover that transforms the pool into a dance floor, a fully equipped gym, and bathrooms complete with gold-plated fixtures. That’s a lot of sparkle even for the level of wealth associated with a purchase this big. However, the glamour isn’t the unusual part; the degree of intentional secrecy is.

The superyacht community does entertain a level of confidentiality—mostly for security purposes—but the Scheherazade is kept under so many wraps that it makes people believe something dubious must be going on when it comes to the owner’s identity. For instance, all of the contractors and crew members signed nondisclosure agreements, there’s a custom cover to hide the boat’s nameplate, and when Scheherazade arrived at the port, workers built a metal structure on the pier to keep passersby from seeing the yacht.

The 459-foot superyacht is currently docked in a Tuscan port.

This yacht, however, isn’t the only one catching people’s attention as of late. The world’s second-biggest yacht, called Eclipse , is owned by Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who owns the British soccer club, Chelsea. On Thursday, March 10, the UK government sanctioned Abramovich's assets.

As for Scheherazade , that mystery is still being investigated, and until the feds can figure out who the not-so-proud owner is, the behemoth on water will remain where it is, shrouded in a cloak of well-orchestrated secrecy.

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A 459-Foot Mystery in a Tuscan Port: Is It a Russian’s Superyacht?

As European authorities go after the luxury assets of oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin, a superyacht cloaked in secrecy has come under investigation.

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By Michael Forsythe Gaia Pianigiani and David D. Kirkpatrick

From Germany’s North Sea ports to the French Riviera, open season has been declared on superyachts. Across Europe, authorities are hunting down luxury vessels tied to Russian oligarchs in the effort to inflict pain on President Vladimir V. Putin’s allies.

In Marina di Carrara, a small Italian town on the Tuscan coast, one of the world’s biggest, newest and most expensive superyachts — called the Scheherazade — is under scrutiny by the Italian police. Almost as long as a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, it dominates the waterfront.

The yacht, estimated by the website SuperYachtFan to cost about $700 million, has two helicopter decks and is studded with satellite domes. Inside, photos supplied by a former crew member show, is a swimming pool with a retractable cover that converts to a dance floor. Then there’s the fully equipped gym and the gold-plated fixtures in the bathrooms.

In the rarefied world of the biggest superyachts ( only 14 that are at least 140 meters, or 459 feet long), the Scheherazade is alone in that no likely owner has been publicly identified. That has spurred speculation that it could be a Middle Eastern billionaire or a superconnected Russian — even Mr. Putin.

The ship’s captain, Guy Bennett-Pearce, a British national, denied that Mr. Putin owned or had ever been on the yacht. “I have never seen him. I have never met him,” he said. He added, in a phone interview from the yacht, that its owner was not on any sanctions list. He did not rule out that the person could be Russian, but declined to say more about the owner’s identity, citing a “watertight nondisclosure agreement.”

Captain Bennett-Pearce said that Italian investigators had come aboard on Friday and examined some of the ship’s certification documents. “They are looking hard. They are looking at every aspect,” he said. “This isn’t the local coppers coming down, these are men in dark suits.” A person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it, confirmed that the Italian financial police had opened an inquiry.

On Monday night, Captain Bennett-Pearce said he had “no choice” but to hand over documents revealing the owner’s identity to the Italian authorities. He said he would do so on Tuesday and had been told they would be handled with “confidentiality.”

“I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this will clear the vessel of all negative rumors and speculations,” he wrote in a message to a New York Times reporter.

The mystery about the ship’s owner arose because — even for the hyper-confidential world of superyachting — there is an unusual degree of secrecy surrounding this vessel. Not only do contractors and crew members sign nondisclosure agreements, as on many superyachts, but the ship also has a cover to hide its name plate. And when it first arrived at the port, workers erected a tall metallic barrier on the pier to partly obscure the yacht from onlookers. Some locals remarked that they had never seen anything like it for other boats.

In his State of the Union address last week, President Biden announced a Justice Department task force to go after oligarchs close to Mr. Putin and facing sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions have been imposed against hundreds of people, and the list keeps growing.

Last week, French authorities seized the yacht Amore Vero near Marseille as it was preparing to depart, claiming it was owned by a man on that list: Igor Sechin, the head of the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft. In Italy, police in Sanremo impounded Lena, a yacht belonging to Gennady Timchenko, a Putin friend who controls an oil exporting company. In nearby Imperia, police also impounded the Lady M, a yacht belonging to Alexei Mordashov, Russia’s richest man. The fate of the Dilbar, one of the world’s biggest yachts that the United States says belongs to the oligarch Alisher Usmanov, is unclear. It is in Hamburg, and German officials said the vessel could not leave without an export waiver, Bloomberg News reported .

Some of the biggest superyachts are owned by Russians who are not on the sanctions list. The world’s second-largest, Eclipse, which has a missile defense system and a mini submarine, is owned by Roman Abramovich, the billionaire who is selling his ownership stake in the British soccer club Chelsea. Andrey Melnichenko, a billionaire coal baron, owns Sailing Yacht A.

Determining the ownership of assets that the wealthy want to keep hidden is difficult, especially without a warrant, because they are often zealously guarded by private bankers and lawyers and tucked away in opaque shell companies in offshore secrecy havens. The Scheherazade is flagged in the Cayman Islands and its owner, Bielor Assets Ltd. , is registered in the Marshall Islands. The yacht’s management company, which Captain Bennett-Pearce says is also registered in the Cayman Islands, works from the ship and uses his rental villa in nearby Lucca as its address.

One trade website, which bills itself as “the global authority in superyachting,” claims that the vessel’s owner is “known to be a Middle Eastern billionaire.” The Scheherazade shares a name with the female storyteller in “The Arabian Nights,” and it made one brief foray into the Red Sea in September 2020, calling at the Egyptian port of Hurghada. But mostly it stays in Marina di Carrara, where it has been moored since last September.

Locals have their own theory about the ship’s ownership. Some have heard people onboard speaking Russian. And Scheherazade is also the title of a symphonic work by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

“Everybody calls it Putin’s yacht, but nobody knows whose it is,” said Ernesto Rossi, a retired clerk who was taking a walk along the marina’s promenade on Friday. “It’s a rumor that’s been going around for months.”

In Italy, the phrase “Putin’s yacht” has become shorthand for a mysterious and ultra-luxurious ship. It’s also a joke among the dozens of crew members, Captain Bennett-Pearce said. “I’ve heard the same rumors.”

Another, smaller vessel, the Graceful, has long been tied to the Russian president and is known as “Putin’s yacht.” It was tracked leaving Germany for the Russian port of Kaliningrad just weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. (U.S. government officials point out that Mr. Putin owns little outright; many of the luxurious homes or ships he uses are owned by oligarchs.)

Mr. Putin appears to have a penchant for big pleasure boats. During his time as Russia’s leader, he’s been photographed on yachts from Russia’s northern reaches to the Black Sea in the south. Last May, he and Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, took a cruise on a yacht at the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

The Scheherazade’s builder, Lurssen Group, whose website promises customers “complete confidentiality,” declined to comment about its ownership. Until June 2020, when the completed ship left the pier in Bremen, Germany, it had the code name “Lightning.” The same company built the even bigger superyacht the Dilbar. A similar gigantic yacht, code-named “Luminance,” is now being built at Lurssen, scheduled to be completed next year.

“Of course, all orders and projects of the Lurssen Group and its subsidiaries are treated in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations,” said Oliver Grun, a company spokesman.

About 70 percent of the Scheherazade’s crew is Russian, Captain Bennett-Pearce said. And during each of the past two summers, it has sailed to Sochi, the last time in early July 2021, according to MarineTraffic, a top maritime analytics provider. The ship’s construction was managed by Imperial Yachts, a company in Monaco that, Reuters reported , manages the Amore Vero, Mr. Sechin’s seized yacht. Nick Flashman, who oversees construction of large vessels at Imperial Yachts, declined to comment.

One former crew member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nondisclosure agreement, said that shipmates called it “Putin’s yacht.” The person said the ship was manned by an international crew during “boss off” times; when it was “boss on,” the crew was replaced by an all-Russian staff. In the weeks before the Scheherazade’s 2020 trip to the Black Sea, the foreign crew was dismissed, the person said.

The former crew member supplied photos of rosters of both international and Russian crew members. The Times reached out, via social media, phone or email, to at least 17 of them. Few responded.

One of the Russians said only that he had worked on the Scheherazade, citing a nondisclosure agreement. Another person said it would be dangerous to talk. One man denied serving on the vessel; another said he hadn’t worked at sea in 25 years.

Captain Bennett-Pearce said “categorically there is not a European crew that comes on and a Russian crew that comes on.” Many of the ship’s senior officers are from Britain, New Zealand and Spain. Many international crew members were dismissed in 2020, replaced by Russians who didn’t demand the high salaries and benefits that their predecessors had, the captain said. “It came down to economics,” he said.

Given the antipathy that people outside of Russia have toward Mr. Putin, if the Russian president really were the owner or principal user of the yacht, keeping non-Russian senior crew members like him on staff would make no sense, Captain Bennett-Pearce said.

“If there’s a European crew onboard it’s the biggest smoke and mirror and the biggest risk I’ve ever heard of,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Dmitriy Khavin , Christoph Koettl , Julian E. Barnes , Jason Horowitz , Rebecca R. Ruiz and Eric Schmitt .

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the new task force announced by President Biden in his State of the Union address. He announced a Justice Department task force to pursue and seize the assets of oligarchs associated with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, not a joint task force with partners in Europe, which was previously announced.

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Michael Forsythe is a reporter on the investigations team. He was previously a correspondent in Hong Kong, covering the intersection of money and politics in China. He has also worked at Bloomberg News and is a United States Navy veteran. More about Michael Forsythe

Gaia Pianigiani is a reporter based in Italy for The New York Times.  More about Gaia Pianigiani

David D. Kirkpatrick is an investigative reporter based in New York and the author of “Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East.“ In 2020 he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on covert Russian interference in other governments and as the Cairo bureau chief from 2011 to 2015 he led coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings. More about David D. Kirkpatrick

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Italian prosecutors widen probe into superyacht that sank off Sicily to 2 more crew members

Italian prosecutors have put under investigation two more crew members of the Bayesian, the superyacht that sank off Sicily last week, killing seven people, their lawyer said

ROME -- Italian prosecutors have put under investigation two more crew members of the Bayesian, the superyacht that sank off Sicily last week, killing seven people, their lawyer said on Friday.

The move widens the probe into the tragic shipwreck, for which the ship’s captain, New Zealander James Cutfield, is already under investigation for possible manslaughter and culpable shipwreck charges.

Since Wednesday, Tim Parker Eaton — the engineer who was in charge of securing the yacht’s engine room — and sailor Matthew Griffith — who was on watch duty on the night of the disaster — are under investigation for the same possible charges, their lawyer said.

“The profile of their possible responsibilities is still unclear, as the investigation has just started,” lawyer Mario Scopesi told The Associated Press.

Scopesi added that both Parker Eaton and Griffith left Italy on Wednesday, along with Cutfield and the rest of the crew.

The three crew members were among 15 survivors of the Aug. 19 sinking that killed British tech magnate Mike Lynch , his daughter Hannah and five others.

Chief prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio, who is heading the investigation, has said his team will consider each possible element of responsibility including those of the captain, the crew, individuals in charge of supervision and the yacht’s manufacturer.

The Bayesian, a 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged luxury yacht, went down near Sicily, in the Mediterranean. Investigators are focusing on how a sailing vessel deemed “unsinkable” by its manufacturer, Italian shipyard Perini Navi, sank while a nearby sailboat remained largely unscathed.

Prosecutors said the event was “extremely rapid” and could have been a “downburst” — a localized, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm and spreads out rapidly upon hitting the ground.

All crewmembers survived except for the chef, but six passengers were trapped in the yacht's hull and died.

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