Vai Instagram / @bluemarinecleaning
Alisher Usmanov, one of the most prominent Russian oligarchs, lost his prized possession, the 500-feet superyacht Dilbar, back in April. It is difficult to give up an asset as magnificent as the $800 million luxury vessel, and it certainly isn’t child’s play to maintain the behemoth. Billionaire or government, whoever the seized yacht comes under, splurges money in the tunes of several million a month for its preservation. We got thinking about how much the enormous Dilbar megayacht must be costing the German authorities of the Federal Criminal Police Office. The officials impounded the 500-footer in the port of Hamburg nearly half a year ago.
Since its capture, the vessel hasn’t moved an inch, though it was completely covered for a while, perhaps for a new paint job. Moored and motionless like a sitting duck, the only thing churning around the luxury pleasure craft were equally colossal monthly bills. Maintaining this floating palace must be costing the German government crippling money. First, a seized yacht loses its shipping registry and, consequently, its insurance.
The gigantic Dilbar docked in the port of Hamburg has been occupying space for the last six months. Moving the yacht to any other location may result in damage, which the government will bear, and it won’t be cheap. Per a video posted by YouTube channel eSysman SuperYachts, the insurance policy for a $500 million vessel would cost somewhere around $1 million a month. The Dilbar yacht is worth $800 million; as per its value, its insurance policy will be more than $1.4 million a month. Then there is the maintenance, and for a ship of this size, even that can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
Assuming a skeleton crew looks after the vessel, it will still need a minimum of 40-50 people to sustain the world’s largest megayacht (by volume), flaunting 3,800 square meters of living space. On average, the salaries of a crew of 30 total upto $200,000 a month, which could increase to almost $335,000 a month in the case of the Dilbar yacht. In addition to salaries, the maintenance cost of a superyacht this big costs no less than $30,000 a day. In better days, a crew of 100 handled the keeping of Alisher Usmanov’s goliath.
With the Dilbar being seized for nearly six months, she must’ve already set the government back by a whopping $12 million. And this does not include the docking charges. The Dilbar yacht costs the German taxpayer nearly $2 million a month (a price that Usmanov would laughingly pay).
Sanctioned oligarch Alisher Usmanov pleaded to the European courts to suspend the sanctions-
Russia’s leading billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, worth $17.9 billion, filed an appeal at the EU’s General Court on April 29, asking the bloc’s second-highest tribunal to suspend the sanctions until judges decide. His legal request got rejected, leaving the metal and mining tycoon ship-less. Had the tycoon got his massive boat back, the German government could’ve saved a lot of money. Till when will authorities continue to bear this cost when it is well known that EU court fights over sanctions have a reputation for lasting years? The Dilbar is an ultra-lavish superyacht, undoubtedly one of the world’s most extensive, expensive, and larger-than-life vessel. Spanning more than three times the length of an Olympic swimming pool with two helipads, a garden, and many amenities, it will burn a giant hole in the government’s pocket than anticipated.
