The 80-member crew of a Russian oligarch‘s superyacht jumped ship after the billionaire was apparently unable to pay wages due to international sanctions prompted by Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
The Dilbar, a 510-foot vessel valued as high as $750 million and owned by metals and mining magnate Alisher Usmanov, is moored in Hamburg after the captain and his crew bolted. Usmanov, a 68-year-old, Uzbekistan-born pal of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is worth an estimated $18 billion, but he was one of several oligarchs to be individually sanctioned by the West.
“We have tried all avenues to find a solution to keep the team in place, and protect our positions, but have reached the end of the road of possibilities,” Dilbar Capt. Tim Armstrong wrote in a message to the crew, according to Bloomberg.
For now, the boat, which features a huge swimming pool and two helipads, will be guarded by a skeleton crew deployed by the German boatbuilder Luerssen, which built it and had been retrofitting it.
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The yacht is named after Usmanov’s mother and is the world’s largest.
The German Ministry for Economy and Innovation said on March 3 that the federal customs agency must issue export waiver for the boat to sail away. The U.S. Treasury Department has designated Dilbar, as well as Usmanov’s private jet, as “blocked property.” Under the sanctions, the crew cannot be paid in U.S. dollars.
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Usmanov called the decision “unfair” and “defamatory.”
