How an ex-CIA agent is tracking the luxurious superyachts of Russian oligarchs

Yacht watching has emerged as the newest global sport, as Russia's mega-rich oligarchs rush to move their massive, luxury boats out of Western waters.

Following sanctions from the European Union and the United States, governments and residents are sharing their sightings of the superyachts as they attempt to cruise away.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union speech last week that his country will find and seize the yachts, luxury apartments and private jets of sanctioned Russians.

"We are coming for your ill-begotten gains," he said.

Alex Finley is a former CIA officer living in Barcelona, Spain, near a busy harbour at Port Vull. She started the hashtag #YachtWatch after spotting some significant yachts in her neighbourhood, such as Russian business magnate Alisher Usmanov's Dilbar, valued at $600 million US ($765 Cdn).

"These are really big, glimmering, sleek, technologically-advanced machines," Finley told As It Happens guest host Gillian Findlay. 

She described how the enormous boats "have all the toys" and look more like buildings and private cruise ships from afar.

Here is part of that conversation.

You've been tracking [the Russian superyachts] and I understand there's a community that's now tracking them. How does this work?

I happened to have an encounter with Solaris one day. 

She had been in the shipyard here in Barcelona and I went down to the port really just to take an afternoon off on a beautiful, sunny day…. I tweeted about it and next thing I know, there was a whole bunch of people interested in oligarch yachts and wanting to know what yachts were where. 

Yacht watching here in Barcelona is fantastic because a lot of yachts from all over the world come in. I think just as people started watching the sanctions and started realizing that the yachts were going to be part of this, people wanted to participate. 

You mentioned Solaris. Who does that belong to?

That one belongs to reportedly Roman Abramovich, who is not currently under sanctions. He is the one who also is the owner of the football club Chelsea in the U.K. and who is trying to sell it very quickly, it looks like.

[Editor's Note: After this interview was recorded, Abramovich was hit with sanctions including asset freezes and travel bans. As for Chelsea FC, the team cannot sell any more tickets or merchandise — and it cannot buy or sell players on the transfer market.]

And what have you been able to track in terms of Solaris? Where is it now?

The last that I checked a couple of hours ago, she was just south of Sardinia.

A lot of these yachts that we've been looking at are heading towards the Maldives or the Seychelles. A few are in Montenegro, but they look like they're probably going to be on the move.

Why are they heading there?

Neither the Maldives nor the Seychelles are part of the EU or U.S. sanctions that are on these oligarchs.... Maybe that's just a holding place for them.

One of the things I've been trying to figure out is: where do they go [next]? These are very advanced technological machines…. They require infrastructure and crews and people who would know how to take care of them. And my understanding at this point is that the only places in the world that offer that level of knowledge, that level of service and infrastructure, they're all in Europe or the United States. 

How many of these oligarch-owned yachts have been seized so far?

Only four. 

Dilbar was in Hamburg, and there's actually some questions now about whether it was seized or what the status is.

People are starting not to use the word "seized" because the idea isn't that the government takes it and then owns it or can sell it or repossess it in some way. It's just that the beneficial owners cannot access it. Nobody can do service on it, the crews can't access it. It's like a frozen bank account in that sense.

French authorities in La Ciotat have done the same with Amore Vero and then the Italians have taken two … Lady M and Lena.

With all the talk of sanctions and all the talk of wanting to put pressure on the oligarchs, four doesn't seem a very big number. What's the impediment here?

Not all of these oligarchs are under sanction, so that's part of it. 

I think one of the hardest parts for the governments is going to be proving beneficial ownership…. These oligarchs themselves go out of their way to make sure it's very unclear who the owner is. These are very opaque ownership structures that use offshore companies and all kinds of shell companies to layer back and sort of hide who the beneficial owner is. 

Some have been [confirmed] with the Pandora Papers, with the Panama Papers … but in a lot of the cases, that has not happened. Any government officials who might want to try to arrest or stop these yachts need to really be able to make sure they can confirm who the beneficial owners are, and that takes time.

Beyond the obvious — I guess, the pleasure and the status of owning such a yacht — what is it that the oligarchs are doing? Why do they have these yachts?

For me, these mega-yachts are a symbol of the hypocrisy of a number of these oligarchs. They have supported and propped up a dictator — and in some cases aided him in his efforts to destabilize Western democracies.

At the same time, they take their money out of Russia and they spend it here in the West and enjoy all of the benefits and take advantage of all of the wonderful things that Western democratic societies can offer — namely rule of law, meaning you can invest in something, own a villa, own a yacht, and it's not going to just get stolen from you. 

If the idea is [that] by going after the oligarchs, that pressure is, in fact, put on Putin and somehow changes his behaviour, why would seizing a yacht actually make a difference?

Russia's a great place to make money, but these guys like to spend it in the West and they put their families in the West. Their children go to schools in the West. 

They take advantage of all of the benefits of democracy, and [so] they're not going to be happy to have that taken away. 

They have been willing to support Putin because they were benefiting from it. And I think as those benefits start to disappear, they will grow more and more unhappy and it will eventually be an untenable situation.

Written by Mehek Mazhar. Interview with Alex Finley produced by Ashley Fraser and Sarah Jackson. Q&A edited for length and clarity.