An $81 million (£67 million) superyacht owned by banned Russian oligarch Andrey Gurev, who claims it was abandoned in the Caribbean after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, is to be auctioned by the government of Antigua and Barbuda.
The Antigua and Barbuda government warned its owners on MondayAlfa Nero Superyacht That they had 10 days to claim the ship or it would be sold to the highest bidder.
The Information Minister, Melford Nicholas, said the Alpha Nero had been left in Antigua’s Falmouth harbor since February 2022 and that the government was “trying to prevent future threats due to non-repair by the owner of the luxury vessel”.
In a statement, the Office of the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda said: “Notices will be published in newspapers and other media for a period of 10 days, informing them of the sale of the ship Alpha Nero to meet the requirements of the Forced Sale Act. If the owner fails to claim the ship within that period, The Government of Antigua and Barbuda will sell it to the highest bidder.”
Gurev, 62, who earns $10 billion from Russian fertilizer company FosAgro, is the owner of Alfa Nero, according to the US government sanctions against him last year. According to the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). It had “identified the Alpha Nero, a Cayman Islands-flagged yacht that AG Gurev purchased for $120 million in 2014, as a blocked asset of AG Gurev”.
The yacht, which has a 12-metre infinity pool, Jacuzzi, spa, beauty room and helipad, is used by Gurev’s family, where his son (also Andrey) and his son’s wife Valeria study. London College of Fashion and once reportedly said on Instagram that she was “too pretty for work”. Like many yachts, it is owned through an opaque offshore structure, and Gurev has denied being the owner.
Guryev, who was Subject to UK Government restrictions in April 2022According to OFAC, the owner of London’s largest private residence: the 25-bedroom £50 Highgate mansion in Wittenhurst.
The property is officially owned through Borage Limited, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Gurev’s London-based lawyers said “Mr Gurev does not own Wittenhurst” without providing further details. A spokesman for Gurev previously told The New Yorker that he was the beneficiary of a trust that owned the property but not the legal owner.
Last year Gibraltar auctioned off the £65m superyacht Axio, owned by acknowledged steel billionaire Dmitry Pompyansky. The sale of Axioma attracted controversy because it was sold not for the benefit of the Ukrainian people but for the US investment bank, JP Morgan, which claims to have paid Pumpyansky more than €20.5m (£17m).
Pumpyansky until March 2022 was the owner and chairman of steel pipe manufacturer OAO TMK, a supplier of Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom. Britain said the billionaire had amassed an estimated fortune of £1.84 billion. “Closest to Putin” was one of the oligarchs.
