Scheherazade is registered to a Marshall Islands company, but the real owner remains shrouded in secrecy. Image / Maria Pevchikh, Twitter
Italy has been urged to seize a superyacht allegedly owned by Vladimir Putin after an investigation by the anti-corruption unit of Alexei Navalny, Russia's jailed opposition leader.
Navalny's team said the US$700 million (NZ$1 billion) yacht was staffed by officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSO).
The vessel, called Scheherazade, is undergoing repairs and maintenance at a marina in western Italy. It is said to be the world's most expensive yacht whose owner has not been identified.
Associates of Navalny have demanded that the Italian authorities confiscate the 459ft boat, which has a swimming pool with a retractable roof that converts into a disco dance floor.
The call to seize the superyacht comes as Russia's war with Ukraine continues to stall. Ukraine rejected an ultimatum from the Kremlin to surrender Mariupol or local authorities would face "military tribunals", which would be likely to breach the Geneva Convention.
Vlodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said "Ukraine cannot fulfil Russia's ultimatum" and that any peace deal "compromises" would be put to a referendum.
The leaders of the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy on Monday discussed the escalating crisis amid US intelligence warnings that the Kremlin was changing tactics to bomb Ukraine into submission.
In a statement, Downing Street said the leaders would continue to support Ukraine "militarily" and to "increase the pressure on Russia to halt its unprovoked invasion". The Pentagon accused Russian forces of committing war crimes and was "helping with the collecting of evidence of that".
Residential areas in Odesa, on the Black Sea, were shelled for the first time. In Kherson, the only city under Russia's control, protesters were shot at by Russian troops.
A Russian newspaper inadvertently disclosed that almost 10,000 Russian troops have been killed and another 16,000 wounded. Previously, the Russian military had admitted only that 500 soldiers had died since the invasion began.
Scheherazade, which sails under a Cayman Islands flag, was launched in 2020 and it is registered to a company called Bielor Assets Ltd, domiciled in the Marshall Islands, but the real owner remains shrouded in secrecy.
Details of the investigation were published online on Monday and threaten to further embarrass Putin. Associates of Navalny have previously identified an extravagant £760 million (NZ$1.45b) palace on the Black Sea coast as allegedly belonging to the Russian president, prompting demonstrators to lampoon him by holding golden toilet brushes at opposition rallies.
Navalny is on Tuesday expected to hear a verdict in the latest criminal case against him, in which prosecutors are seeking 13 years in a maximum security penal colony over alleged fraud and contempt of court.
In a posting on social media, Maria Pevchikh, who works for Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, said: "We've been investigating Putin's corruption for over a decade, and there is one thing we know for sure – Putin never keeps assets under his own name.
"A dozen of Putin's personal guards and servants are constantly maintaining one of the world's largest yachts, docked in an Italian port. We think that this is solid enough proof that Scheherezade belongs to Putin himself and must be immediately seized."
Leonid Volkov, a close associate of Navalny, said: "We found another $700 million that Putin stole from the Russians – the yacht, for which Russian soldiers are now dying."
Navalny's team published the crew list which, they alleged, showed that everyone employed on the vessel except for the captain is a Russian national. They said they were able to cross-reference personal details of the people on the list with leaked flight manifests.
For more information on Scheherazade and a tour of all of its six decks, watch our newest video with English subtitles. https://t.co/s0qLTl0vCd
— Maria Pevchikh (@pevchikh) March 21, 2022
Using the personal data, the investigators claimed to have identified many of the crew as officers employed by the FSO, which provides personal security details for Putin. Around half of the 23 listed staff were linked to the FSO, according to the investigators.
Flight manifests, according to the Navalny team, show crew members flying together to Milan, the nearest major airport to the yacht's base at the Marina di Carrara.
The investigators said a dozen crew are registered at the official address of the Kremlin unit providing security for Putin at his Black Sea residence near Sochi. The team also said they had spoken to one of the yacht's crew members, who had confirmed it was Putin's vessel.
According to the New York Times, the Scheherazade made one "brief foray" into the Red Sea in September 2020 and two voyages to the Russian summer resort of Sochi in that year and again last year.
The Times said it had spoken to a former crew member who said shipmates called it "Putin's yacht".
The former crew member also claimed that it was manned by an international crew during "boss off" times, but during "boss on" periods the crew was replaced by "an all-Russian staff". The New York Times alleged that the foreign crew was dismissed before a trip to the Black Sea in 2020.
According to the Navalny investigators, they examined the passport details of the crew members and leaked air travel data, claiming the crew flew to Italy "as if on a watch".
They claimed a senior crew member was "recorded in the phones of various people as 'Sergey FSO' – an alleged reference to the state security service – and his address registered to the FSO's base in Sochi. The investigation claimed that "some other crew members are registered at the same address".
Pevchikh said: "Only on the first two sheets of the crew list, we see 23 people, of which almost half are related to the FSO. We can't think of better proof that this yacht belongs to Putin. Even in Italy, thousands of kilometres from Moscow, it employs people who are officially listed as Putin's security guards and personal staff."
Guy Bennett-Pearce, the yacht's captain, told the New York Times earlier this month that he did not believe Putin was its owner. He said: "I have never seen him. I have never met him."
Bennett-Pearce did not rule out the yacht's owner being a Russian national but said a "watertight non-disclosure agreement" prevented him from saying more. He added, however, that the owner was not on any sanctions list.
He said Italian authorities had boarded the yacht at the start of March following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that relevant documentation had been handed over. He also sent the New York Times a message in which he said: "I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this will clear the vessel of all negative rumours and speculations."
The yacht has six decks, including two helicopter landing areas, as well as its own spa, sauna and gym. It has gold-plated fixtures in the bathrooms. When it first docked in Italy, workers erected a metal barrier to partly obscure the yacht from view, and also covered the name plate.
The name Scheherazade is taken from the female storyteller in the Arabian tales One Thousand and One Nights and is also the name of a symphony by the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov.
Authorities in several European Union countries have begun seizing yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs to comply with sanctions. A yacht believed to be owned by Igor Sechin, a key Putin ally, was seized by the French authorities while the yachts of two oligarchs on sanctions lists were held by Italian officials.
The National Crime Agency in the UK has set up a "kleptocracy" unit to identify and freeze assets owned by Putin and his associates.
Putin has surrounded himself with friends and allies who have made vast fortunes while he has been in power. But anti-corruption activists say the Russian president, who earns an official salary of £70,000, has been careful not to register any property under his name.
Last week he was ridiculed when he appeared at a Moscow rally in support of the Ukraine war wearing an Italian designer coat worth £10,000 and a sweater costing £2500.
• Length: 140m (459ft) - only 14 yachts in the world are at least this length, but this is the only one without a named owner
• Launched: 2020
• Speed: 19 knots
• Price: US$700m
• Annual running costs: US$50-75m
• Gross tonnage: 10,167
• Two helipads and a helicopter hangar
• Six decks
• Three fireplaces (two gas, one wooden)
• Swimming pool (including retractable swimming pool cover that turns into a dancefloor)
• Three saunas (Turkish, Finnish, cryosauna)
• Mechanical piano that plays itself
• Elevator
• Spa complex and beauty salon
• Gold-plated bathroom fittings
• Billiard room (including table equipped with mechanism that stops it tilting)
• Fully equipped gym
• Diving and fishing equipment
Iran has vowed to respond, claiming its enriched uranium wasn’t destroyed.