Captain of Russian oligarch's $80 million superyacht gave crew 48 hours to leave a Spanish port a day after the Ukraine invasion, report says
- The captain of an oligarch's yacht gave the crew 48 hours to leave a port after Russia's invasion.
- The yacht reportedly left Spain a day earlier than the captain's orders and sailed to Montenegro.
The captain of a Russian oligarch's superyacht gave the crew 48 hours to set sail from a port in Spain one day after Russia invaded Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The 230-foot vessel, Galactica Super Nova, is worth $80 million and owned by Vagit Alekperov, according to the website SuperYacht Fan. Alekperov, the chairman of the Russian oil firm Lukoil, has an estimated net worth of nearly $23 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. He has not been sanctioned.
The superyacht was docked in a port in Barcelona in late February, The Journal reported.
On February 25, the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine to carry out a "special military operation," the captain of Galactica Super Nova told the crew to prepare to sail in 48 hours, a person who was on the yacht at the time told The Journal.
The captain had been away on vacation and came back to the ship early, the report said.
"We are leaving Sunday," the captain said to his staff, the person told The Journal. The superyacht left the next day, one day ahead of schedule, the report said.
Galactica Super Nova arrived in the port of Tivat in Montenegro on March 1 but left the following day after the country's government said it would adopt European Union sanctions, though it isn't an EU member.
When the superyacht left Tivat, its tracking signals stopped, leading to speculation that it might be trying to avoid detection.
The ship-tracking website MarineTraffic still showed on Wednesday that Galactica Super Nova was off the coast of Montenegro.
Though Alekperov hasn't been sanctioned, the US has listed him among the politicians and oligarchs with close ties to Putin, making his superyacht a possible target for future sanctions, The Journal said.