There are two types of superyachts on the planet. Those that were docked because their billionaire owners stopped to shop, and those that were docked because their billionaire owners stopped and never came back. The story we will tell now is about the second type and contains all the elements that could be the beginning of a movie. Gender is more complex.

Sleep. Of all the luxuries we can find at Club de Mar de Palma, a private boat harbor on the island where Zuckerberg and Bezos also “stop”, there is one that stands out very much. On this ship, called Tango, a crew shows up religiously every day to “handle” her and prepare her to begin the course, but she never leaves her anchorage.

Tango, which is 78 meters long and has a swimming pool, open-air cinema and massage room, is one of the jewels of the Dutch Feadship shipyards, but it lives in a kind of golden cage and is the only sea tour since then. There was a distance of just over a hundred meters in April 2022 between the Astilleros de Mallorca route, which was intervened during its adjustments, and the Club de Mar route, which was towed on September 1, 2022. error, connection with Russia.

Inside the story. Over the past 20 years, the use of economic sanctions has increased significantly, with the United States imposing restrictions on more than 15,000 individuals, companies, and governments. These sanctions affect approximately one-third of the countries in the world.

A notable example of how these sanctions work is the case of Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who was sanctioned for his alleged ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime, specifically for operating in the Russian energy sector. Vekselberg is chairman of Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with interests in metallurgy, machinery, energy, telecommunications and other fields.

The modus operandi. The sanctions process begins when the United States detects a threat to the country’s national security, foreign policy or economy. Case in point: Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 or the Ukraine War, which triggered a series of sanctions affecting Russian financial elites in 2018, including Vekselberg, who was placed on the Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Denied Persons .

This move meant that companies and banks in both the US and other countries were legally blocked from doing business with him. This not only froze his bank accounts but also prevented him from managing international assets, for example, here comes a connection to Mallorca with his luxury yacht Tango, worth $90 million.

“Escape” attempts. There is no doubt that being included on the sanctions list made Vekselberg’s life difficult. To avoid them, his associates and trusted individuals attempted to hide their connections to certain entities by using fake identities to continue their activities.

In one example that resulted in an arrest, a collaborator in Switzerland allegedly placed an order for a fictitious yacht named “Fanta”. According to US officials, Fanta was actually Tango and the contact resulted in criminal charges. Regardless, the US government kept a close eye on his transactions and apparently discovered that his allies were using US banks to maintain the yacht, thereby violating sanctions.

We seize the boat. Thus, we come to April 2022, when the United States Department of Justice managed to link the yacht to these illegal activities and issued an order to seize the yacht. With the cooperation of Spanish authorities, Tango was seized in Palma de Mallorca.

It’s been a little over two years since Tango was “arrested” at the port with the help of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and he’s still there. The luxury ship has not been sold and is costing the US government a small fortune in maintenance.

We sell boats. We are talking about a figure of over 20 million Euros; This is a figure so large that it led the US government to the logical decision: to put it up for sale. The problem is that, for now, it has not found a new owner, and its situation is reminiscent of the one that plunged the small Caribbean island of Antigua into a truly hopeless situation. At that time, as here, another Russian oligarch was left without a yacht due to US sanctions, and when Antigua took over the expenses, it was on the verge of ruin.

Of course, Tango is something different. It belonged to a Russian oligarch whom the US, like many others, was trying to isolate economically, with the war in Ukraine in the background.

The irony of life is that the ship is making Americans’ wallets bleed.

Image | GoodFon, Maarten Visser

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