A mega yacht thought to be owned by an already-sanctioned Russian oligarch was detained by Spanish authorities on Wednesday.
The £458m vessel, called Crescent, reportedly belongs to Igor Sechin, who heads up Russia’s oil giant Rosneft. At 135 metres long, it is one of the world’s biggest and most luxurious of its kind in the world.
It was docked in the port of Tarragona, Catalonia, when officials took action, Spain’s Transport Ministry said. According to the monitoring site Marine Traffic, the boat arrived in Spain from Italy in November last year.
Mr Sechin, a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, was one of many Russian billionaires sanctioned by the European Union on 28 February – including having all his assets in the bloc frozen.
The UK followed suit on 10 March, hitting the oil tycoon with asset freezes and travel bans over his well-known ties to to the Putin regime. It was the same day the UK government sanctioned Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, imposing the same restrictions on him as they did Mr Sechin, throwing the west London-based Premier League club into disarray.
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