A $500 million megayacht that is connected to the sanctioned Russian tycoon Alexey Mordashov has mysteriously ended up in Hong Kong after a more than week long voyage from the port of Vladivostok where it was last anchored.
It had been docked there since March after stops in the Maldives and Seychelles over the northern hemisphere winter. The 465 foot Nord-Longer than the length of an American football field left the Seychelles on March 12, was briefly parked in Sri Lanka and arrived in Vladivostok later that month.
Mordashov, the largest shareholder in steelmaker Severstal PJSC and Russia's third-richest man, kept his Nord anchored in Russian ports until his departure last week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Mordashov was sanctioned by the European Union, the UK and the US after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. In May he joined a growing list of Russian businessmen trying to fight the sanctions imposed by the EU.
A spokesman for Mordashov said he is currently in Moscow and doesn't want to comment on the yacht's movements.
More than a dozen yachts connected to sanctioned Russian businessmen and worth more than $2.25 billion have been seized by the US and European governments to punish them for their close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Other megayachts have been immobilized in ports or naval yards across Europe after the invasion, as authorities try to prevent ships from moving to ports where sanctions don't apply.
Some of the megayachts fled to Russia, Turkey and a few other friendly havens. The US has formed a task force called KleptoCapture to pursue the assets of Russian oligarchs. The FBI and other agencies sent agents to Fiji to seize $325 million Amadea that the US said belonged to Russian billionaire Suleiman Kerimov.
Read: US Sails Sealed Russian Yacht to California From Fiji
The seizure resulted in a long-running legal battle in Fiji that resulted in a big win for the US after a Fiji court allowed the US to seize the ship. The US authorities hired a new crew and sailed the yacht to a port in Southern California in late June.
The Nord, which features two helipads, a cinema and 20 luxury cabins, left Vladivostok on Sept. 27 and listed the Vietnamese port of Da Nang as its destination. According to vessel location data compiled by Bloomberg, it changed its destination to Hong Kong a few days later.
According to Marine Traffic, the ship had also changed its flag- the maritime authority under which the vessel is registered from the Cayman Islands to Russia in June. The Nord seems to be safe in Hong Kong.
According to a Marine Department statement, the Hong Kong government has been enforcing sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, but it doesn't have the legal authority to take action on unilateral sanctions imposed by other jurisdictions.
The Marine Department said that certain countries may impose unilateral sanctions against certain places on the basis of their own considerations.