Russian Superyacht Arrives in Hawaii Flying US Flag

Amadea was seized after Fiji legal battle
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jun 17, 2022 4:26 AM CDT
Russian Superyacht Arrives in Hawaii Flying US Flag
The superyacht Amadea is moored in Honolulu on Thursday, June 16, 2022.   (AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy)

A Russian-owned superyacht seized by the United States arrived in Honolulu Harbor on Thursday flying an American flag. The US last week won a legal battle in Fiji to take the $325 million vessel and immediately sailed it to Hawaii. The FBI has linked the Amadea to the Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. The US said Kerimov secretly bought the Cayman Island-flagged vessel last year through various shell companies. The ship 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 AP reports.

The FBI said a search warrant in Fiji turned up emails showing that Kerimov’s children were aboard the ship this year and that the crew used code names—G0 for Kerimov, G1 for his wife, G2 for his daughter and so on. The 348-foot-long vessel, about the length of a football field, features a live lobster tank, a hand-painted piano, a swimming pool and a large helipad. Lawyer Feizal Haniff, who represented Millemarin Investments, the owner on paper, had argued the owner was another wealthy Russian who, unlike Kerimov, doesn’t face sanctions.

(More superyachts stories.)

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