The United States continues to seek out expensive assets of Russian oligarchs around the world, after which they are confiscated. This time, a $450 million Amadea yacht, owned by sub-sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, was found and arrested in Fiji. Russian Federation of Vladimir Putin.
U.S. officials said the Russian oligarch's 348-foot luxury yacht was moored in the port of Lautoka, Fiji and seized by local law enforcement at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, CNN reported.
“This yacht hijacking should show every corrupt Russian oligarch that he can't hide – even in the most remote part of the world. We will use every means to enforce the sanctions imposed in response to Russia's unjustified and unjustified war in Ukraine,” she commented on the decision Court Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
U.S. officials say gold-rich Kerimov purchased the yacht after he was placed on the 2018 U.S. sanctions list. They also allege that Kerimov violated US law by using the US banking system to conduct transactions in dollars to cover the costs of the yacht, according to the FBI. The cost of maintaining a yacht ranges from 25 to 30 million dollars a year. The yacht sailed through the Caribbean Sea through the Panama Canal to Mexico and then arrived in Fiji on April 12, authorities said.
According to the publication, Karimov himself was detained in France in 2018 after he brought to the country 20 million euros in suitcases without reporting the money to the tax authorities. He was suspected of money laundering because of the villa. The initial charges were dropped, but in 2019 the French authorities launched a new tax investigation.
