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March 19, 1898

The Russian Imperial Yacht “Standart”

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Inside the capture of a Russian oligarch's superyacht

The radio fizzed with static as one of the world's most expensive superyachts sailed through the mist into San Diego Bay.

"Sécurité, sécurité, sécurité… this is the inbound yacht the Amadea."

At the stern, an American flag fluttered above the boat's lavish, mosaic-lined swimming pool.

The $325m (£307m) vessel had spent most of its life touring picturesque ports in the Mediterranean. Now, under the control of US authorities, it was destined for a drab concrete wharf in an industrial harbour.

It is the most ostentatious trophy claimed by a taskforce that - in the words of US President Joe Biden - was set up to pursue Russian oligarchs' "ill-begotten gains".

The BBC has been granted exclusive access behind the scenes of a superyacht seizure.

As missiles rained down on Ukraine in the early days of the war, US prosecutor Andrew Adams was sitting in his New York office with a list of Kremlin-connected billionaires and their luxury assets.

But it looked like time was running out. On a digital map of maritime traffic, he could see superyachts linked to oligarchs making a scramble for safety - sailing towards countries where, he suspected, they believed their assets would be safe from sanctions.

Among the opulent floating targets, one "mega yacht" stood out, Mr Adams said.

The Amadea is roughly the length of a football pitch, with a helipad at one end and a 10-metre infinity pool at the other. Inside, there is a gym, beauty salon, cinema and wine cellar. There are luxury cabins for 16 guests, and accommodation for 36 crew to service their every need.

From a distance, it appears like the tip of an iceberg. Sleek, clean lines and a gleaming white facade seem to project an image of pristine purity. Simply keeping the Amadea shipshape comes at vast expense, with annual running costs estimated at £25m or more. But the ownership of the yacht, and the source of the wealth locked away in its marble floors and teak decking, remains disputed.

US investigators say billionaire Russian politician Suleiman Kerimov is the true owner. Mr Kerimov, a senator in the Russian parliament, rejects the claim.

The 56-year-old is one of the richest men in Russia, according to Forbes, which estimates that he and his family are worth $12.4bn. He made his fortune after the fall of the Soviet Union, buying up large stakes in Russian companies, including the country's biggest gas and gold producers.

The US sanctioned Mr Kerimov in 2018. The UK followed suit in March, as did the EU, which said he had supported or implemented policies which undermine the independence, stability and security of Ukraine.

The Hunt for the Russian Superyachts

The inside story of the game of cat and mouse between some of the world's most powerful nations and some of Russia's richest men.

Available now on BBC iPlayer (UK Only)

The list of Russian elites banned from spending their fortunes in Western countries had been growing since 2014, as governments tried to isolate President Putin after the annexation of Crimea. When tanks rolled into Ukraine in February, oligarchs faced renewed scrutiny.

"We're joining with European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets," President Biden announced on 1 March.

Mr Adams - a lean, blue-eyed prosecutor with the US Department of Justice - was placed at the head of a new taskforce, named KleptoCapture, dedicated to enforcing US sanctions.

He planned to use his experience tackling organised crime to honour the president's pledge.

With tactics developed in the fight against the mafia, the taskforce - which includes agents and analysts from the likes of the FBI and the US Secret Service - aims to identify high-ranking targets, find evidence of any law breaking and then "seize assets as quickly and as aggressively as we can," he said.

But two weeks after the invasion began, Mr Adams could see the Amadea "scrambling out of waters where we would normally be able to seize it".

"It became critical when it turned off its location monitor, its transponder," he said. "Essentially, the boat tried to go dark."

On 12 March, the Amadea left Antigua in the Caribbean and five days later travelled through the Panama Canal, stopping briefly in Mexico before striking out into the Pacific Ocean on 25 March.

After more than a fortnight at sea, it arrived in Fiji. The yacht was scheduled to leave for the Philippines within 48 hours, but the US believed its true destination was Vladivostok, a Russian port near the border with China and North Korea.

As it sailed through the Pacific, investigators in the US were searching for any sanction violations that could be used as a "hook" to seize the Amadea, Mr Adams said. Their goal was to prove that Mr Kerimov owned the boat, and that US dollars had been used to purchase, supply or maintain it.

Tracking down a superyacht's true owner requires more than a google search, Mr Adams said. "It can be extremely difficult to unravel who owns these vessels." Ownership is often hidden behind shell companies and trusts, registered in countries where information is "tightly controlled and not something that the US can always easily access," he said.

But Russia's war had led to a "boom of information" provided by co-operative foreign countries, including those which "historically have been viewed as opaque" - places where company ownership is hard to investigate, Mr Adams said.

It required a massive investigation in a short time, with members of the taskforce interviewing sources with knowledge of the boat's finances, and scouring bank statements and corporate records, he said.

"We were able to get that information in part because there was an enormous upswell of support for Ukraine and support for this effort."

According to US court documents, investigators unearthed evidence, which, they say, proves Mr Kerimov has owned the boat since August 2021 - three years after he was first sanctioned by the US Treasury.

"What we found was that one, Mr Kerimov owns the boat, and two, that he had substantial numbers of US dollars that flowed into the boat over the years in violation of US sanctions."

As it docked in Fiji, local authorities searched the Amadea and found records of financial transactions stretching back four months. Hours later, armed with this new information, FBI agents applied to a US judge for a warrant to seize the boat. The FBI listed their reasons for believing Mr Kerimov was the yacht's "true beneficial owner," although many of the details have been redacted in a copy published by the US government .

Mr Kerimov's representatives told the BBC that his alleged ownership of the Amadea is "denied and unproven".

A week after the boat arrived in the Pacific island, a local lawyer intervened on behalf of a company that is formally registered as the superyacht's owner. It led to a seven-week legal wrangle, as appeals against the warrant worked their way up to Fiji's supreme court.

The lawyer argued there was no evidence the yacht represented the proceeds of crime, and claimed it actually belonged to a different billionaire Russian oligarch.

Eduard Khuadainatov is the former CEO of state-owned oil giant Rosneft. He was sanctioned in June by the EU, which said he now owned one of the biggest private oil companies in Russia. He is not sanctioned in the US.

The lawyer told the Fijian court there was "undisputed evidence" that Mr Khuadainatov owned the Amadea. He is also the named owner of a $700m yacht linked to Putin, which has been frozen by Italian authorities. But the US claims he is a "straw man" - intended to conceal the identity of the true owners.

"To own several half-billion dollar yachts as a mid-tier industrialist is totally implausible," Mr Adams said.

Mr Khudainatov has not responded to requests for comment.

FBI agents flew in while the Amadea was moored in Fiji's turquoise waters in early May. Under a blazing sun, a line of men in dark suits boarded the boat as crew members wearing white polo shirts waited on deck.

Agents discovered it "looked like a luxury yacht that was on a high-speed chase across the Pacific", Mr Adams said. It had "been battened down pretty heavily", he added.

Inside, they found ornate furnishings, including chandeliers, gilded fittings and expensive artworks.

The taskforce is still calculating the total value of the luxuries, and the authenticity of the most prominent pieces are under investigation. Among them, one striking item stood out - a lavish object resembling a rare Fabergé egg. Only a few dozen were made for the Russian Imperial family, and they have come to symbolise opulence and power.

"Maybe it's a real Fabergé egg, maybe it's not a real Fabergé egg," Mr Adams said. "Time will tell."

After nearly two months tied-up beside shipping containers, the Fijian supreme court cleared the way for the US to seize the boat. It had become an international spectacle.

After the ruling in June, the island's chief of police posed for photographs on deck with US embassy officials as the Stars and Stripes fluttered overhead. The boat, which had flown the colours of the Cayman Islands, would now sail under the American flag.

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But before it could depart for the US, Mr Adams decided to replace the crew. "We needed a crew that we could rely on," he said.

After a three-week voyage, the Amadea reached the US mainland, sailing into San Diego Bay on 27 June.

It was a proud moment for the taskforce, but it was "just the beginning of a process here in the United States," Mr Adams said. "It's not the end."

For the US, the ultimate goal is to sell the boat, he said. "It's to provide funds for Ukraine."

But first, they must persuade a court that Mr Kerimov is the true owner of the boat, and that sanctions were violated to pay for it.

To prepare, investigators are analysing "terabytes of data", including bank records and masses of electronic communications, while Russian language linguists are investigating financial documents.

It is not the only superyacht caught in the taskforce's net. Days before the Amadea arrived in Fiji, FBI agents with the Spanish police seized the $90m Tango, which is owned by sanctioned billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. It remains moored in Mallorca, but Mr Adams hopes this too, can be sold to help rebuild Ukraine.

In Europe, security experts have been closely following the saga of the Tango and the Amadea. They reveal a key difference between law enforcement approaches on either side of the Atlantic.

Several oligarch-linked superyachts are being held in the EU, and one in the UK, but the boats have been frozen, rather than seized.

"In principle, if you only freeze an asset it will return to the owner at some point; if it's seized, they lose it forever," said Tom Keatinge, the director of the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute.

While the US has long-standing laws to tackle sanctions evasion and seize assets, he says authorities in London and Brussels are "struggling to design legal mechanisms" that will allow them to seize assets that have initially been frozen.

Since the invasion, the UK has sanctioned at least 1,200 people, including more than 120 oligarchs with an estimated combined net worth of over £130bn. But, where action has been taken, it has focused on freezing assets.

In March, former transport secretary Grant Shapps filmed a selfie-style video alongside a £38m yacht named Phi on the day it was detained by the National Crime Agency in London's Canary Wharf.

He said the move had "turned an icon of Russia's power and wealth into a clear and stark warning to Putin and his cronies".

But with the detention of the Phi, the UK was relying on a law with a broader scope than those used by its international allies.

The boat's owner, Sergei Naumenko, is not on any sanction list. And yet, under UK law, vessels can be detained simply for being owned or operated by somebody connected with Russia.

Guy Booth, the yacht's captain, said Mr Naumenko was "absolutely not an oligarch and he's not, as described, a close personal friend of Vladimir Putin".

"If this were an oligarch's boat, it would be four times the size," he added.

Mr Booth says the operation seemed "staged" for publicity, adding that Mr Shapps appeared to be "posing like a big game hunter who'd just shot a lion".

The Department for Transport said it stands firmly by its decision to detain the Phi, adding that the UK would "continue to act within its available powers to ratchet up the economic pressure on Russia and make life harder for Russian elites".

Mr Booth remains positive that "one day eventually we will sail off down the Thames".

As Western governments grapple with confiscating frozen assets, Mr Adams expects more countries to follow their "aggressive" approach to seizures.

"We want to make it as difficult as possible to exist as a person who can draw on the benefits of corruption in Russia and at the same time exist in fabulous luxury in the West," he said.

In the year before the invasion, the Amadea spent most of its time in Europe. It dropped anchor off the likes of Monaco, Marseilles and Montenegro, according to analysis for the BBC by Spire Global, a data and analytics provider.

Today, it is moored at the edge of a busy cargo terminal used by vast, rust-stained car carrier ships. A public park runs close to its berth, and locals have taken to sharing pictures of their glamorous new neighbour on social media.

"They should open it to the area's homeless," one person commented.

Another wrote: "I hope they sell it to help Ukrainian refugees."

What are the sanctions on Russia and are they working?

South africa row over russian superyacht's arrival.

Watch CBS News

Superyacht seized by U.S. from Russian billionaire arrives in San Diego Bay

June 27, 2022 / 3:40 PM EDT / CBS/AP

A $325 million superyacht seized by the United States from a sanctioned Russian oligarch arrived in San Diego Bay on Monday.

The 348-foot-long (106-meter-long) Amadea flew an American flag as it sailed past the retired aircraft carrier USS Midway and under the Coronado Bridge.

"After a transpacific journey of over 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers), the Amadea has safely docked in a port within the United States, and will remain in the custody of the U.S. government, pending its anticipated forfeiture and sale," the Department of Justice said in a statement.

The FBI linked the Amadea to the Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, and the vessel became a target of Task Force KleptoCapture, launched in March to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs to put pressure on Russia to end the war in Ukraine. The U.S. said Kerimov secretly bought the vessel last year through various shell companies.

But Justice Department  officials had been stymied  by a legal effort to contest the American seizure warrant and by a yacht crew that refused to sail for the U.S. American officials won a legal battle in Fiji to take the Cayman Islands-flagged superyacht earlier this month. 

The Amadea made a stop in Honolulu Harbor en route to the U.S. mainland. The Amadea boasts  luxury features  such as a helipad, mosaic-tiled pool, lobster tank and a pizza oven, nestled in a décor of "delicate marble and stones" and "precious woods and delicate silk fabrics," according to court documents.

"The successful seizure and transport of Amadea would not have been possible without extraordinary cooperation from our foreign partners in the global effort to enforce U.S. sanctions imposed in response to Russia's unprovoked and unjustified war in Ukraine," the Justice Department said.

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March 23, 2022

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BY THE IMPERIAL PORCELAIN FACTORY, ST. PETERSBURG AND KUZNETSOV FACTORY, MOSCOW, SECOND HALF OF 19TH CENTURY

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British engineer and sailor on sunken Bayesian superyacht under investigation

Two British crew members who were on board the Bayesian superyacht which sank during a tornado off the coast of Sicily are under investigation, sources say.

Tech tycoon Mike Lynch , his teenage daughter and five others were killed when the British-flagged yacht capsized and sank within minutes in the early hours of August 19.

Italian prosecutors are investigating ship engineer Tim Parker Eaton and sailor Matthew Griffith for possible manslaughter and shipwreck charges, a source told Reuters on Wednesday.

The source said Mr Parker Eaton is suspected of having failed to protect the 56-metre-long yacht's engine room and operating systems.

Mr Griffith was on watch duty on the night of the incident, the source added.

The boat’s 51-year-old captain James Cutfield, a New Zealander, was put under investigation for the same offences on Monday , and declined to respond to prosecutors during questioning on Tuesday.

The investigation does not mean the crew members are guilty and does not mean formal charges will follow.

The crew were among 15 survivors of the sinking that killed seven people.

The crew was saved, except for the chef Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, while six passengers were trapped in the hull.

Mr Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, alongside Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo were lost when the yacht sank.

Hannah had recently finished her A-levels and was due to study at Oxford University.

Their bodies were later recovered from the wreck following days of searching.

Mr Lynch founded software giant Autonomy in 1996, and was cleared in June of carrying out a massive fraud relating to its 11 billion dollar (£8.64billion) sale to US company Hewlett Packard, after a trial at a federal court in San Francisco, California.

The yacht sinking has puzzled experts, who said a vessel like the Bayesian, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini , should have withstood the storm and should not have sunk as quickly as it did.

Prosecutors in the town of Termini Imerese, near Palermo, have said their investigation would take time, and would require the wreck to be salvaged from the sea.

The Bayesian is lying on its right side, at a depth of around 50 metres.

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Do not squander our Russia invasion, Ukraine tells Britain

Foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba urges Western allies to take ‘bold decisions’ over use of Storm Shadow missiles

Ukraine has urged Britain not to squander the momentum created by its invasion of Kursk and to grant it permission to fire Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia .

Kyiv has ramped up its calls for the UK to drop restrictions on the long-range weapon since mounting its cross-border raid into the southern Russian frontier region.

The air-launched cruise missile, which can dodge enemy radar and precisely hit targets up to 190 miles away, is seen as crucial for targeting airfields deep inside Russia.

On Thursday, Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, urged the country’s Western allies to take “bold decisions”, with both Britain and America holding back on granting permission to use the weapon more freely.

He told reporters arriving at a meeting of EU counterparts in Brussels: “What we want to avoid is the situation when the public message is that no one, in principle, is against deep strikes in Russia, but no real action is made to allow it.

“What really matters is the timing. And this is the issue today. This is why we have very open conversations with the United Kingdom, with the United States, not to waste the monument our soldiers and civilians paid for with their blood and sacrifice.”

The Telegraph reported earlier this week that the UK supports Storm Shadow strikes on Russian soil but will not say so publicly because of concerns it would provoke a row with the US.

Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, has issued a similar message about the use of Scalp-EG, the French version of Storm Shadow.

But it is understood the missiles operate alongside classified US systems, which requires permission from Washington.

Ukraine has captured more than 500 square miles of territory since it launched its surprise ground offensive into Russia’s southern Kursk region more than three weeks ago.

The operation marked the first foreign invasion of Russian soil since the Second World War and has been described as part of the plan to end Moscow’s invasion by Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Ukrainian president has said the incursion was launched to create a buffer zone to prevent similar cross-border attacks by Moscow’s forces.

But the Russian air force is still able to launch long-range bombardments of missiles and drones from deep inside its country with little answer from the Ukrainians.

The White House has argued that allowing Kyiv’s forces to go after military targets inside Russia with Western weapons could be seen as escalatory by Moscow.

US officials have also said they believe many potential Russian targets have been moved outside of the range of Storm Shadow missiles.

Mr Kuleba attempted to reassure those concerns by insisting that Ukraine would only use long-range missiles against “legitimate military targets”.

Separately, Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defence minister, and Andriy Yermak, Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff, will travel to Washington this week to hand over a list of potential targets.

Kyiv is also asking the US to sanction strikes using American-supplied Atacms ballistic missiles on Russian soil.

Onno Eichelsheim, the Netherlands’ top general, said Ukraine was allowed to use Dutch-supplied F-16 fighter jets in cross-border attacks, adding further pressure onto the Americans.

But he warned that his American colleagues only “partly” agreed with that position, making strikes unlikely given they will rely on US ammunition.

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In Brussels, Mr Kuleba also warned allies against over-promising, claiming that several nations had not yet delivered Patriot air defence systems pledged earlier this summer.

“Good progress has been made and announcements were made, but again, some Patriot systems were announced and not delivered yet,” the minister said.

Kyiv has around five Patriot batteries – two supplied by the US and three by Germany.

Romania, the Netherlands and Spain have indicated they would help by supplying further systems and ammunition, but there has been no confirmation of their arrival in the war-torn country.

“We are, as you are, entering a school year, and we have to protect our cities. We have to protect our children. So I will urge all partners who have made their pledges to finally deliver these systems,” Mr Kuleba said.

He added: “Some complain about bureaucracy ... some argue that there are delicate internal moments in their politics such as elections. There is always an explanation.

“We pay for all these delays with damage and the loss of lives.”

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