Irina VU

Heads are being scratched in Croatia, after a yacht owned by sanctioned Uzbek oligarch Alisher Usmanov allegedly disappeared from its dock in the central Adriatic.

Reports claim the yacht was replaced with a decoy yacht… almost three months ago. Alarmingly, the apparent heist has only just been noticed by authorities, despite the yacht being frozen under police custody.

Dnevnik.hr reports that the 35-metre Sunseeker 115 Irina VU, which had been dry docked at a marina in Betina as part of western sanctions on Usmanov, was remove and sailed away to Turkey under cover of darkness, only to be replaced by an identical luxury ship to avoid any suspicion.

It’s understood from AIS data that Irina VU is now at the Didim marina in the Turkish part of the Aegean Sea in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey has so far refused to go along with western sanctions and has become a de facto ‘transit hub’ for Russia.

It seems as though nobody realised the yacht had left its dock, and local media is only just reporting its disappearance this week.

“We are still determining the circumstances of the yacht’s disappearance,” says Croatian Transport Minister Oleg Butković.

“We all know it vanished under still unclear circumstances. We shall now determine how that happened and whether there were any failings of the system,” he adds.

Butković says the Croatian intelligence service and the state prosecutor are both taking part in an ongoing investigation.

According to the State Secretary in the Ministry of the Sea Alen Gospocic, who is overseeing the investigation, there is no security at the marina.

In a media statement, Gospocic says authorities had followed protocol by contacting the yacht’s owner after it was arrested and taking it to Betina, where it was taken out of the water and put in dry docking.

However, there was nobody posted to keep watch over the yacht in its new location. “There are hundreds of vessels in the harbour and the harbour master cannot check which vessels are docked and which are not,” he adds.

Usmanov, who was labelled a “pro-Kremlin oligarch” with “close ties to Putin” when he was sanctioned last year, has an estimated wealth of about $15bn (£12bn). He made his fortune producing plastic bags, and built stakes in a range of metals, mining, telecom and media firms. Usmanov also formerly managed the investment holdings arm of Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom and has sponsorship links to Everton FC.

Dilbar

Usmanov is also the owner of megayacht Dilbar, considered the largest personal motor yacht in the world by gross tonnage. The yacht was detained in Hamburg last March as German authorities investigated Usmanov’s finances.

The post Oligarch’s yacht ‘vanishes’ from dry dock in audacious heist appeared first on Marine Industry News.