Alfa Nero and delays seem to be a match made in heaven. The sale of the Alfa Nero to ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt landed Antigua a profit of $63 million. But it has still not landed Schmidt on Alfa Nero. The 267-footer was sold for $67.6 million at the auction held on 16 June but had the former Google CEO waiting on the sidelines owing a pending High Court decision on an application for an injunction. The journey of the abandoned ship Alfa Nero has witnessed immense back and forth and uncertainty since February 2022.
With ample material for a soap opera, the ship saw the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal reject a last-minute application by Flying Dutchman Overseas Limited to block the sale. A second injunction to prevent the completion of the deal was filed by a separate entity, Russian citizen Yulia Gurieva Motlokhov which a High Court judge also rejected. While Schmidt stands ready to take his ship home, these hurdles block Alfa Nero from finally setting sail in a new direction.
During a meeting held on 28 June, the cabinet communicated that Schmidt had shown “a willingness to dispatch the resources; however, because a judicial decision is pending, he was advised by the lawyer to wait a day or two until the court made a decision”. Alfa Nero was blocked from leaving the port of Antigua by the local authorities in a bid to determine the vessel’s ownership in February last year.
Following Ukraine’s invasion, the US Treasury Department claimed that Andrew Guryev purchased the superyacht for $120 million in 2014, but the Russian oligarch has denied the claim. This triggered a sequence of events that led to the yacht’s transfer of ownership to the Antiguan government in April, and, finally, the auction took place in June 2023.
