Sailing Yacht A, one of the world’s largest sailing yachts, has been an anomaly since day one. It never looked like a conventional luxury yacht. Then again, there is nothing conventional about a vessel this radical, though there is certainly a norm in maritime aesthetics. This $600 million megayacht has always charted its own course, in good times and now in bad. Even the way this 468-foot behemoth was seized was anything but ordinary.
The Philippe Starck-designed, Nobiskrug-built sailing yacht was in Trieste, Italy, for maintenance work when EU sanctions hit rumored owner, Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, in March 2022. Within days, Italy’s Guardia di Finanza boarded and froze the yacht under the EU sanctions regime. Since then, the vessel has remained in Italy’s control, immobilized yet costing the state a hefty $35,000 a day in upkeep. One wonders why preserve the vessel at all and pour taxpayer money into it. That question may soon have an answer, as the fate of what has now become a stationary landmark could tilt either way.
The latest development in the stale tale of Sailing Yacht A is that the alleged owner may well come back into possession of it. According to Il Gazzetino, The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that freezing assets held by a trust, as part of sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is compatible with EU law, provided a concrete assessment is made of whether the listed person still had effective control over the asset or substantial access to its financial resources. So now the battle will move to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court over the fate of the submarine-inspired superyacht that has called the Gulf of Trieste home for more than four years.
In layman’s terms, the courts will decide whether the trust structure around the yacht was genuinely independent, or whether Andrey Melnichenko and, later, his wife Aleksandra, still retained real-world power over the asset. The state, on the other hand, does not want the freeze lifted despite monumental maintenance costs to the tune of $46 million. Ironically, if the freeze is ultimately found to have been wrongly applied, the yacht could be returned, and the government that spent tens of millions preserving the vessel may not recover any of that money.
The billionaire would be laughing all the way back to the Mediterranean, having paid none of the staggering upkeep for years and yet walking away with his pristine superyacht, barring a few years of separation. However, there is a flipside if the businessman, worth $24 billion, loses. In that case, nothing really changes. The legal limbo continues, with Sailing Yacht A stuck in the same motionless future until the Italian state finds another legal solution for the ship. As is the case with both superyachts and TAR litigation in Italy, it could take many months, or even years, to decide the vessel’s final fate.
The billionaire behind Sailing Yacht A-
The man with the money, all $24 billion of it, is the founder of fertilizer giant EuroChem and coal company SUEK. Unlike many billionaires of his stature, Andrey Melnichenko is not a product of inherited wealth but a self-made businessman. The 54-year-old had dropped out of Moscow State University, sold computers, ran currency-exchange booths with classmates, and went on to found MDM Bank in 1993, which later became one of Russia’s most successful private banks. Today, the Moscow resident owns two of the world’s most futuristic yachts, Sailing Yacht A and Motor Yacht A, both designed by French architect and industrial designer Philippe Starck. Unfortunately, times have changed, and his representatives no longer acknowledge his connection to either.
