According to court documents obtained by CBS News, the crew of a $300 million superyacht linked to a Russian billionaire is refusing to sail with US authorities who are attempting to seize the vessel.
The Amadea is a luxury yacht that the Justice Department says is owned by Suleiman Kerimov, a Russian billionaire. The legal process was complicated when the crew of the ship refused to help US authorities on their departing voyage.
According to CBS, the reason the crew refused to sail was twofold, the first being the fact that the ship was British.
The crew members are no longer paid to sail the Amadea because the owner's funds have been frozen. The crew is worried that breaching its employment contract by working with US law enforcement could ruin their professional reputation.
Walsh wrote that the current crew of the Amadea are refusing to sail on the Amadea with the U.S. authorities to an unknown destination.
The US seems to have hired a new crew for the ship. The captain of the boat repeatedly refused to have new crew members on board due to a lack of proper vetting.
One of the largest superyachts in the world is the Amadea, which has a helipad, pool, and eight cabins.
The billionaire gold magnate is one of dozens of billionaires whose foreign assets have become chess pieces.
The US has fallen behind its European allies when it comes to taking away the ill-gotten gains of billionaires.
The lawyer for the billionaire argued that the owner of the ship is a Russian oil executive who is not on the sanctions list. The lawyer's appeal that was preventing the ship's seizure was dismissed on Friday. He has a week to appeal.
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