Italian police are vying to identify the owner of a superyacht linked to Vladimir Putin amid fears he may be on the run from a Tuscan shipyard.
Scheherazade, which is said to cost $ 700 million (£ 528 million), has been under investigation since March for potential links to sanctioned Russians, including the president.
A spokesman for the Italian Maritime Group, a company that repairs and builds luxury yachts, said the ship, which has been undergoing repairs at its Marina di Carrara shipyard since September, is scheduled to set sail by mid-June.
However, there are fears that Scheherazade may be preparing to leave the shipyard after the New York Times reported that it was moved from a dry dock into the water on Tuesday. The newspaper cites a crew member who said he could leave the port immediately.
Mariana Ferrante, the company’s marketing director, said: “The maintenance work is progressing and there are no planned departures soon.
The company initially said the 6m-euro renovation would be completed in early 2023. The yacht is said to be equipped with a spa, swimming pools, two helipads, a wood-burning fireplace and a billiard table designed to tilt so as to reduce the impact of the waves.
Marina di Carrara’s financial police boarded Scheherazade in early March after EU sanctions against Russian oligarchs were imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They seized property documents from British yacht captain Guy Bennett-Pearce. At the time, US officials said they were also investigating whether the yacht belonged to Putin. Activists working with imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny also say Putin is the owner.
The ship has not been confiscated and until its owner is identified and sanctioned if necessary, the ship is free to leave Marina di Carrara.
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A source from the financial police said that the investigation is “very complicated” due to a network of names of companies that could hide the real owner.
“As you can imagine, after so long it was not easy [to identify] owner, because of all the companies in between, “said the source. “There is no more information we can give, and asking if it belongs to Putin is like a lottery. The source did not confirm whether the police were preparing to seize the ship or not.
An investigation by La Stampa newspaper in March linked Scheherazade to Eduard Yurievich Khudainatov, a former president of Russia’s state oil company Rosneft, through a fictitious company registered in the Marshall Islands. Khudainatov is not on the sanctions list.
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