Taxpayers are paying dearly to maintain assets seized from Russian oligarchs across the globe as the U.S. and other countries struggle to sell them off, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Taxpayers in the country of Antigua and Barbuda are paying $28,000 a week to keep mold out of the Alfa Nero, a $120 million yacht seized from Russian billionaire Andrey Grigoryevich Guryev.
To date, Ukraine has received just $5.4 million in funds acquired from the sale of oligarchs' billionaire toys. The U.S. Justice Department has a team of 50 devoted to leveling criminal cases against the owners of seized Russian assets. If those cases are successful, only then can those assets be sold."The costs for Ukraine are huge, and morally I think it is a no-brainer that the party that inflicts that cost and a horrible war should pay," Anders Ahnlid, who heads the EU’s Russian assets team, told WSJ."But that has to be done under the law.
Antigua had previously tried to sell the Alfa Nero to ex-Google executive Eric Schmidt, but a Russia-linked company contested the sale at the last minute and Schmidt dropped the deal. The sale would have gone through for just $67 million, a fraction of its initial cost.
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