A $200m (£163m) superyacht owned by Viktor Medvedchuk, an oligarch and friend of Vladimir Putin who is under sanctions, is to be sold at auction after its seizure in Croatia earlier this year.
The Ukrainian government said a Croatian court had ruled that Medvedchuk’s 92.5-metre Royal Romance yacht should be transferred to the Ukrainian Asset Recovery and Management Agency (Arma), which said it would “preserve the economic value by selling it at auction”.
It would be first such sale on behalf of the people of Ukraine since western governments imposed restrictions on the assets of hundreds of oligarchs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Medvedchuk, 68, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician, was arrested in Ukraine in April and handed over to Russia in a prisoner exchange in September. He is often referred to as the “dark prince” of Ukrainian politics, and Putin is godfather to his daughter Daria.
The Arma, a special branch of the Ukrainian government tasked with “finding, tracing and management of assets derived from corruption”, said its agents had flown to Croatia and “inspected the arrested yacht belonging to the family members of a people’s deputy and one of the leaders of a political force banned in Ukraine”.
It said: “Arma searched for the specified asset within the framework of the criminal proceedings and subsequently after imposing the arrest received the elite property to preserve the economic value by selling it at auctions.”
Croatian police raided the yacht last month on behalf of the FBI, according to the Croatian newspaper Jutarnji list. It reported that a court in Split granted a search warrant request from the US justice department on 15 November, and confirmed that the search took place on 19 November. The judge Dinko Mešin is said to have told the newspaper that the search warrant named Medvedchuk and his wife, Oksana Marchenko, in connection with alleged money laundering.
Royal Romance, which was built by the Dutch superyacht contractor Feadship in 2005, has cabins for 14 guests and space for 21 crew, as well as a 4-metre-wide swimming pool with “flowing waterfall cascading over the stern”.
In September, a 72.5-metre superyacht seized from a Russian oligarch under sanctions, Dmitry Pumpyansky, was sold at auction to an undisclosed buyer for $37.5m, in the first sale of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The yacht, which had a swimming pool, a 3D cinema room, a gym, a whirlpool bath and a fully equipped spa – was not sold for the benefit of the Ukrainian people but for the US investment bank JP Morgan, which claimed Pumpyansky owed it €20.5m.
