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A Russian oligarch’s £259m superyacht has been seized in Fiji after the United States won a legal battle to take control of it.
The court ruling represented a significant victory for the US as it has encountered several obstacles in its attempts to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs around the world.
The US removed the motorised vessel within an hour or two of the court’s ruling, possibly to ensure the yacht did not get entangled in any further legal action.
Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the US Justice Department, said on Twitter that the superyacht had set sail for the US under a new flag, and that American authorities were grateful to police and prosecutors in Fiji “whose perseverance and dedication to the rule of law made this action possible”.
It was not immediately clear where the US intended to take the Amadea, which the FBI has linked to the Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov.
Fiji director of public prosecutions Christopher Pryde said unresolved questions of money laundering and the ownership of the Amadea need to be decided in the US.
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.
The 348-foot-long vessel, about the length of an American football field, features a live lobster tank, a hand-painted piano, a swimming pool and a large helipad.
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