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Thunder: A closer look at one of the wildest yachts on the water

Thunder was commissioned by an owner who wanted to be able to have breakfast in Saint-Tropez, lunch in Monaco and dinner in Portofino. The result was one of the largest and fastest yachts the world has ever seen...

There is magic at play in the heart of Thunder . The 50 metre Oceanfast has an interior that could stoke any imagination. And as with many things that cast a spell, there’s a slight tinge of something menacing here as well. Or at least that was the distinct feeling I got as I stepped into the yacht’s main saloon recently alongside IYC broker Mark Elliott. It’s a kaleidoscopic vision with sharp, oblong shapes, funhouse mirrors and immaculately upholstered pieces of furniture that curve and undulate like a body. As I looked around the space for the first time, my brain froze, overwhelmed by the cacophony of visuals. I heard Elliott, standing next to me, release a small sigh before saying, “If these walls could talk.” And then I heard another voice answer, “Oh but I think they can…”

I hadn’t realised we weren’t alone, and my head snapped to attention to see who had answered Elliott so confidently and cryptically. Standing at the forward end of the salon, near a stingray-skin-wrapped railing that slithered through hairpin turns, stood a small, wraithlike man with an ethereal smile. He gestured widely around him and finished his thought. “There are cameras and microphones all over the place.”

Though he didn’t immediately identify himself,  I later found out the man was a former captain who steadfastly refused to have his name in print. His reluctance, he said, was due to his time aboard Thunder , when he rubbed shoulders with some of the world’s most powerful men. He hopes never to cross paths with their equally powerful enemies and has made himself a ghost, one of several associated with this singular vessel.

Thunder was famously commissioned in 1995 by the Greek shipping magnate Theo Angelopoulos with one goal in mind. He wanted to be able to have breakfast in Saint-Tropez, lunch in Monaco and dinner in Portofino. The result was one of the largest and fastest dayboats the world has ever seen.

Angelopoulos had hired the legendary Australian-English Jon Bannenberg to design the boat. Bannenberg set about drawing up one of his trademark creations, with an arrow-shaped bow section, low sheer line, and swooping yet understated lines along the superstructure. To match this aesthetic and to meet her original owner’s requirements, she needed to be fast – very fast. But the measly 5,900 horses offered by her twin MTU V16 diesels weren’t going to cut it. So, a third powerplant was added, a 4,600-horsepower gas turbine monster from Textron Lycoming, a company best known for building jet engines for airplanes. The resulting 10,500-horsepower package had Thunder A (as the boat was known then) flying at up to 40 knots.

But, of course, propulsion is only one part of the equation for speed, the other being mass. For this variable, the native Australian went home. Passing  over the more known yards in the Netherlands and Germany and, working with SP Technologies in the UK and Australian naval architect Phil Curran, Bannenberg and the original owner decided that Oceanfast, located on Australia’s remote western coast, would do the job. And they’d do it in advanced composites, including carbon fiber. And with so much carbon fiber and main beams in bulletproof Kevlar, says Maksym Burgazli, another of the yacht’s former captains, Thunder isn’t just light and strong, she is also nearly impervious to erosion and osmosis.

“I think Oceanfast connected with my dad because of their fresh thinking, and of course the Australian thing,” says Dickie Bannenberg, Jon’s son. “They were able to do groundbreaking things with lightweight, high-performance and sharp-looking boats.”

Straight-line speed was far from the yacht’s only performance-related laudable. According to Burgazli, Thunder ’s original military-grade trim system by Maritime Dynamics was the same equipment used to keep decks stable on missile launchers, and a great feature for guests. The jet-powered yacht’s top-notch emergency-steering system, which he said was much like a torpedo avoidance system, allowed her to change direction from port to starboard in under four seconds.

It’s unclear if these rather, shall we say, bellicose features would play a role in her future owner lineage, but it wouldn’t exactly be shocking if they did. After Angelopoulos, the yacht would be owned by Boris Berezovsky, a mathematics professor from Moscow who made billions from the privatisation of former Soviet state property in the 1990s. An ally of Boris Yeltsin and a one-time member of the Duma, he fell out of favor in Russia and was granted asylum in the UK. His close associate (and former guest on Thunder B ), Alexander Litvinenko, died from radiation poisoning in 2006. Berezovsky himself would be found dead in his home under mysterious circumstances in 2013.

Next in line in the yacht’s ownership history was Boris Kogan, a Ukrainian businessman with close connections to a group of weapon logistic contractors known as the Odessa Network. Kogan (who died of natural causes in 2017) had a taste for the wild side, and it extended to the decoration of his newest toy which he named Lady K .

For starters, he painted the exterior silver and gold – not just the colors, but actual flakes of metal inside a clear coat. “There were flakes of gold in there that were as big as your fingernail,” Elliott recalls. As if having a yacht with a jet engine wasn’t flashy enough. (The current yacht’s owner, a fan of Jon Bannenberg’s work, had Thunder repainted during a 2021 refit, which also eliminated the central turbine for fuel efficiency’s sake – although it is available and carefully stored in a box, should anyone want to reinstate it.)

Kogan was also responsible for Thunder ’s current unprecedented interior. A 2015 refit transformed the interior. According to his former captain, a Ukrainian interior designer worked closely with Roberto Cavalli’s Visionnaire design company to create the same baroque motif Kogan enjoyed in his houses, offices and planes. He says the transformation was upwards of €9 million ($9.6m) – not including the paint job. The effect is just a bit… polarising.

I remember thinking that this article would be difficult to write because there is so much going on in the yacht’s interior and so little to compare it to. So here is my best stab at describing it: imagine if Salvador Dalí had won the lottery, licked a hallucinogenic toad, and then gone furniture shopping.

“It’s a sharp intake of breath when you walk inside Thunder , isn’t it?” Bannenberg says. “I think that interior is a good example of taste being subjective.” If the silent part of what the younger Bannenberg says seems damning, then I’m happy to advocate for the devil. Because frankly, when it comes to Thunder ’s interior, I kind of love it.

The woodwork, including inlays and joinery, is so pristine as to approximate the sublime. Fractal patterns emerge nearly everywhere your eye could possibly land. The skins of poisonous and man-eating reptiles line the railings and flat surfaces, even the toilet bowls. A bathroom on the main deck has a sink that is a massive, chrome human head, with the faucet pouring directly into the top of the skull.

The accommodations level is no less provocative. The amidships master is awash in black crushed velvet and more mirrored surfaces than is necessary for inspecting one’s evening attire. When I posted a photo of myself online sitting on the black velvet bed with crisp, white piping, writer Thomas Chatterton Williams commented, “My God, man, it looks like you made $250 million in porno!”

Ill-gotten gains aside, my absolute favorite part of this yacht – and one of my favorite interior spaces on any yacht I’ve been aboard – are the mirroring guest staterooms toward the bow. These cabins are remarkable for a few reasons. For starters, they are separated by a wooden wall that undulates like a snake between them for no other discernible reason than an aesthetic principle.

They each also have highly lacquered, wooden lounges that form seats that aren’t terribly comfortable, but my goodness, are they gorgeous.

With its gently sloped planes and delicate angles, all this woodwork is bathed in natural light that beams through ornately decorated and massive portholes, which originally were draped with breezy linens. There is an old-school beauty in these cabins matched with a delicious, non-utilitarian conceit that strikes at the very best of what this yacht can be.

I say “can be” because there could very well be some changes in store for Thunder ’s interior. After all, she is on the market – listed, at the time of writing, at  $8.8 million even though Elliott estimates a similar hull would go for $25 million new – and the Alice in Wonderland vibe in the interior certainly narrows down the buyer pool.

With an eye for a potential refit and to restore the spirit intended by the yacht’s creator, Bannenberg & Rowell has drawn up some elegant and understated renderings for the interior that hark back to the yacht’s Greek commission with a white and Aegean blue color scheme. And Elliott would like to see some minor refit decisions that would create maximal change, including taking out some of the mirrors and making the ceiling all one uniform color, as he feels the geometric shapes there currently tend to crunch the space.

The broker believes Thunder can be a premier charter boat in the Bahamas with or without these modifications. “With jet drives, she only has a 5ft draft, so she is perfect for the Bahamas,” he says. “You can beach it if you want. You can take this boat to the Abacos, and nobody has a boat this size there [because of the shallow water]; they are all in the Exumas. This boat can go where other large yachts can’t. She’s ready for a new adventure.”

More accurately, Thunder is ready to continue her adventure and carry forward a history that is at once proud, marbled and full of life force. And any future owner will be able to add his own pages to one of the world’s most storied and distinctive superyachts.

First published in the August 2022 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue. 

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A Closer Look at the $320 Million Superyacht "Radiant"

In the world of superyachts, one of the most expensive and lavish ships in the world is the Radiant. As of 2018, it was the sixth most expensive yacht in the world and it's one that is boardable by invitation only. If you're as intrigued as we are about this floating luxury vessel, here are the details about what makes the Radiant so highly valued .

The history of the Radiant

The Radiant was originally built as a commissioned vessel ordered by Boris Berezovsky, who is a Russian media magnate. His intention was to have a superyacht built that would outshine the yacht owned by his enemy Roman Abramovich, who was the owner of the Pelorus. This gives us the back story that inspired the specifications of the luxury yacht that was intended to be one of the most glorious yachts to float the seas. The construction code name for the yacht was Darius with the first name to replace the code name as Radiant. The naval architect and builder of the ship is the German shipbuilder Lurssen, and she was launched in 2009 under the Cayman Islands flag . The Radiant was sold by Berezovsky to its current owner, Abdulla Al Futtaim. He hails from the United Arab Emirates and made billions of dollars in the car dealership industry.

Specifications of the Radiant

The Radiant was built with an aluminum superstructure and a strong steel hull. The total length is 360 feet and 10 inches which qualifies it as a superyacht. the beam is 53 ft and 5 inches and the draft is 14 ft 9 inches. The deck material is teak wood. The exterior of the Radiant was designed by Tim Heywood with the intention of making the beam large to provide for an ultra spacious luxury interior. The interior design is provided by Glen pushelberg of Terence Disdale Design. The ship launched in April of 2009 and was delivered to its Russian owner in 2010.

Power of this motor yacht

The tonnage of the Radiant is 5027 tonnes. She is powered by an 8715 horsepower MTU, 16 V 1163 TB73L diesel engine. The maximum speed of the ship is 21 knots. She is also equipped with zero speed stabilizers for the ultimate in guest comfort when the ship is docked, even in rough seas.

The amenities and equipment of the Radiant

We attempted to discover how many cabins were built into the Radiant, but this information is not readily available. It is our assumption that the configuration of the interior may have changed from one owner to another as it is standard practice to make changes to suit the personal tastes and preferences when it changes hands. When it comes to passenger capacity, the Radiant has accepted between 16 to 20 guests aboard. We also assume that there is a crew size of approximately 44 hands for the daily maintenance and operational needs of a craft this size. What we do know is that there are some sweet amenities on board. The Radiant features a helipad so guests and VIPs can easily gain access or leave the vessel, and this also comes in handy in the event of a medical emergency. There is also a cinema for the entertainment of guests, a gymnasium, a spa and jacuzzi for relaxation and a garage to store the tenders. There is also a swimming platform, swimming pools, a beach club, air conditioning and a massage room on board.

Safety equipment

The Radiant is equipped with a state of the art personal protection and security system that is unlike most other defense systems. The comprehensive system includes a barrage of sonic guns that have the capacity to burst the eardrums of any unwelcomed guests such as hijackers or other types of attackers. The yacht is also armed with a series of water cannons that can hurl jets of water that could sink a smaller boat form up to 100 yards from the vessel. A special escape pod has been designed with a speedboat to carry the occupants of the boat to safety if all other measures of protection and security fail. (www.businessinsider.com/most-expensive-yachts-2014-9#6-radiant-is-worth-320-million-5). These safety and protection measures were instituted at the insistence of Berezovsky and the speedboat can reach 75 knots or better. The man who commissioned the building of the Radiant was taking no chances when it came to his personal safety and that of his guests.

Final thoughts

The Radiant remains one of the most expensive and lavish luxury yachts in the world today. It's the sister of the Dilbar, another highly ranking vessel in the collection and the ship was initially built to go one better and deliver a yacht which was superior to the yacht of the commissioning owner's rival, which was the Pelorus. One-upmanship was the passion that was behind the design and ultimate building of this $320 million dollar superyacht, which commands the attention of onlookers at whatever port it is docked. If you're fortunate enough to be one of the invited guests out of the 16 or 20 the ship is intended to accommodate, you will be aboard one of the safest and most secure yacht on the seas and there are a couple of different ways for you to escape if an emergency takes place. From the teak decks to the lavish design features of the interior of this seaworthy paradise, the Radiant is among the most expensive and admired vessels in the world today. Of course, both owners just happen to be billionaires several times over, but it's nice, sometimes, to see how the other half lives.

Written by  Allen Lee

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France sells Riviera chateau seized from late Putin foe

A French Riviera chateau seized from late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been sold to an undisclosed buyer, according to France's agency for handling confiscated assets.

Issued on: 05/02/2024 - 14:55 Modified: 05/02/2024 - 14:54

A local press report said the buyer was the Ukrainian-born co-founder of the WhatsApp messaging service.

Berezovsky, who died in the UK under inconclusive circumstances in 2013, fell out with President Vladimir Putin after helping him rise to power in Russia.

The powerful tycoon acquired the Chateau de la Garoupe on the Cote d'Azur in the 1990s while post-Soviet Russia 's first president Boris Yeltsin was in power.

The mansion was then confiscated by French authorities in 2015, two years after Berezovsky was found hanged in exile at his home in England -- by then a bitter opponent of Putin.

A British coroner's inquest recorded an open verdict, meaning that there was not enough evidence to determine the exact cause of death.

France 's Agency for the Management and Recovery of Seized and Confiscated Assets (Agrasc) did not disclose the identity of the buyer or the deal's price tag for confidentiality reasons.

But French regional daily Nice-Matin reported the property went to WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum.

The newspaper said that the US billionaire, whose mega-yacht Moonrise was seen moored on the French Riviera all summer, paid nearly 65 million euros ($70 billion) for the property -- one of Agrasc's biggest sales since its foundation in 2010.

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The property was built on the prestigious Cap d'Antibes by the British industrialist and MP Charles McLaren. Its rich history has seen it associated with the likes of Pablo Picasso , Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway.

The chateau "represents exceptional architectural and cultural heritage ," the Agrasc agency said.

The chateau, like the neighbouring property of the Clocher (Belltower) de la Garoupe, also owned by Berezovsky, was confiscated after being judged to be the proceeds of money laundering committed by investment company Sifi and its manager, Jean-Louis Bordes.

They were ruled to have acted as a front for Berezovsky.

In response to an initial complaint filed by Russia, French authorities needed 10 years to unravel the complex history of purchases including that of the Chateau de la Garoupe in 1996.

The Cote d'Azur has been popular with rich Russians dating back to visits from the imperial family at the turn of the century.

After the collapse of the USSR, it became a favourite playground for the country's oligarchs.

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• real estate
• Vladimir Putin
• money laundering

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France sells late Putin enemy's Riviera chateau

A French Riviera chateau seized from late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been sold to an undisclosed buyer, according to France's agency for handling confiscated assets.

A local press report said the buyer was the Ukrainian-born co-founder of the WhatsApp messaging service.

Berezovsky, who died in the UK under inconclusive circumstances in 2013, fell out with President Vladimir Putin after helping him rise to power in Russia.

The powerful tycoon acquired the Chateau de la Garoupe on the Cote d'Azur in the 1990s while post-Soviet Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin was in power.

The mansion was then confiscated by French authorities in 2015, two years after Berezovsky was found hanged in exile at his home in England -- by then a bitter opponent of Putin.

A British coroner's inquest recorded an open verdict, meaning that there was not enough evidence to determine the exact cause of death.

France's Agency for the Management and Recovery of Seized and Confiscated Assets (Agrasc) did not disclose the identity of the buyer or the deal's price tag for confidentiality reasons.

But French regional daily Nice-Matin reported the property went to WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum.

The newspaper said that the US billionaire, whose mega-yacht Moonrise was seen moored on the French Riviera all summer, paid nearly 65 million euros ($70 billion) for the property -- one of Agrasc's biggest sales since its foundation in 2010.

The property was built on the prestigious Cap d'Antibes by the British industrialist and MP Charles McLaren. Its rich history has seen it associated with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway.

The chateau "represents exceptional architectural and cultural heritage," the Agrasc agency said.

The chateau, like the neighbouring property of the Clocher (Belltower) de la Garoupe, also owned by Berezovsky, was confiscated after being judged to be the proceeds of money laundering committed by investment company Sifi and its manager, Jean-Louis Bordes.

They were ruled to have acted as a front for Berezovsky.

In response to an initial complaint filed by Russia, French authorities needed 10 years to unravel the complex history of purchases including that of the Chateau de la Garoupe in 1996.

The Cote d'Azur has been popular with rich Russians dating back to visits from the imperial family at the turn of the century.

After the collapse of the USSR, it became a favourite playground for the country's oligarchs. 

mk-as/sjw/lth

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The rise and fall of the oligarch-maker

How one mysterious financier came to sit at the top table of oligarchs and power.

He had glittering success – a long career managing one of the world’s biggest trust companies and making millions from Russia’s oligarchs. Even as his clients mysteriously died, one by one, he managed to stay in the shadows and remain ahead of the game.

Until undercover reporters from Al Jazeera’s I-Unit caught him on secret camera agreeing to sell an English football club to a convicted Chinese criminal, in breach of football regulations.

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Who was this man? And how deep did his business connections go?

A helicopter falls from the sky

At 7:41pm (18:41 GMT) on a spring evening in 2004, an Agusta 109E helicopter cratered into a field in rural Dorset, southern England, two tonnes of steel, wiring and fuel exploding into a fireball.

Nick Kenchington started at the roar of rotor blades above his cottage, fearing the helicopter would “take the roof off”.

“The helicopter flew very low and drowned out the TV,” he later said. His wife got up and opened the curtains. “Then, I saw a white flash in the sky,” Kenchington said. “A second later, we heard a bang. You could see flames all over the meadow below.”

The pilot and his single passenger – lawyer Stephen Curtis – had died in the flames after the helicopter nose-dived into the field, according to air accident investigators.

Curtis had faced threats in the weeks before the crash. Private investigators told him his telephones were tapped. His bodyguards found a bug at his house, according to reports. A message was left on his phone: “Curtis, where are you? We are here. We are behind you. We follow you.”

He was an obscure English lawyer with a remarkable job, running Menatep, a company that controlled Russia’s biggest oil company, Yukos.

Yukos was in conflict with the Russian government, allegedly over unpaid taxes. But it was more than that: it was about the political threat posed by Yukos’ chief, oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky , to spymaster-turned-President Vladimir Putin . Powerful adversaries locked in a battle of wills.

In a twist that would emerge in the weeks after his death, Curtis had approached the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) – the British police-intelligence liaison agency – and offered to serve as an informant. Days before his fatal flight from a London heliport, he had met an agency handler. The morning after his death, Swiss police raided Yukos-related entities in the country; $5bn in assets was frozen.

“The timing could not have been worse for the company,” lawyer for Yukos shareholders Robert Amsterdam told Channel 4 News in 2004.

Curtis understood Yukos’ elaborate offshore structures and was said to keep a lot of the information in his head as Yukos tried to stay one step ahead of the Russian government.

Who would run the beleaguered Yukos oil empire? Khodorkovsky had been arrested at gunpoint and thrown in jail a few months earlier, and now Curtis had just fallen out of the sky. In the vacuum, one man stepped out of the shadows and offered to fill Curtis’ shoes.

It was an ambitious – and risky – undertaking in the fraught and suspicious atmosphere at that time. But the dapper Englishman volunteered his services.

Outside the world of finance, few had ever heard the name, Christopher Samuelson . He has been described as a “company administrator”, “fiduciary”, “trust manager”, as well as “money manager”, “businessman”, and “financier”.

But to really understand what Samuelson was good at, you need to add the word “offshore” to those titles. Offshore is shorthand for secretive tax havens where billions of dollars – legitimate or otherwise – are stashed in banks, away from the prying eyes of taxmen, creditors and spouses.

“He’s a very pleasant, charming man, there’s no doubt about it. He’s good-looking, and he’s got a very easy grace to him… one of those guys who gets on with everybody,” said a source, who used to do work for Samuelson. “He hobnobs with some of the wealthiest people on the planet, and some of them are not particularly nice.”

From his bases in Bermuda, Geneva, and Gibraltar, Samuelson ran Valmet, one of the biggest offshore trust companies in the world and starting in the late 1980s, he nurtured a newly discovered rich seam of wealth: the former Soviet Union.

His links to the world’s richest would soon include “Godfather of the Kremlin” Boris Berezovsky; Berezovsky’s partner, the white-moustachioed Georgian oligarch Arkady Patarkatsishvili (known as “Badri”); oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky; banker Vitaly Malkin, one of the top oligarchs of the Yeltsin era; Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich; and Boris Zingarevich, the pulp and paper billionaire.

“He has access to the most incredible people: very wealthy, powerful people,” said the former associate.

Samuelson and Valmet, later known as Mutual Trust Management (MTM), set up and managed offshore trusts, companies and bank accounts for oligarchs and their businesses. Critics said the money was siphoned out of Russia, that it was capital flight that cost the Russian treasury billions and leeched from the state. Valmet would say the arrangements were above-board.

In meetings between Samuelson and undercover reporters from Al Jazeera’s I-Unit looking to “buy” a football club for their fictitious Chinese boss, the money manager was expansive about his business dealings with Russia.

In the covert recordings in plush hotels across London, the always impeccably dressed Samuelson spoke not only about football and the “sale” being discussed, but also about his decades-long relationships in Russia.

He spoke of travelling to Moscow more than 500 times, of how he even knows Vladimir Putin. How well he knows him, he did not explain, but Samuelson’s emails, seen by the I-Unit and disclosed during litigation, appear to show he was able to get meetings in the hard-to-access sanctuary inside the Kremlin.

Yet his involvement with Russia attracted the attention of investigators, who suspected him of leading a group involved in money laundering and corrupt practices, spawning investigations across Europe.

As Stephen Curtis’ helicopter plunged through cloud and drizzle into Dorset’s lush pastureland, Christopher Samuelson was island-hopping across the Caribbean’s tax shelters, on business in Antigua and the British Virgin Islands. He had spoken with Curtis just two days before, one of many conversations during the preceding months.

With the crisis precipitated by his friend’s death, the action was now miles away, back in London. Samuelson – described by the former associate as an “obsessive” workaholic who would chase even “whacky” opportunities – was soon in town, with a plan.

Khodorkovsky’s personal lawyer, Anton Drel, had stepped in to manage the emergency, so Samuelson typed out a letter understood to have been delivered through trusted intermediaries, by hand, to Mr Drel.

In his “letter to Anton”, the money manager made a pitch to replace Curtis as head of Menatep.

“Stephen was a close friend. Stephen’s tragic death has dealt an additional blow to our mutual client’s business and leaves a large vacuum,” Samuelson wrote to Drel.

“It has been suggested to me … that I would be an ideal choice to at least partly play Stephen’s role. I am ready to help in this matter,” he continued. “I am probably the nearest thing to Stephen and in fact, he and I often discussed strategy etc.”

Among his proposals, Samuelson said he could call on people in Houston, Texas, with influence in the White House, then occupied by US President George W Bush, to help Yukos. He also mentioned his links – through a prominent Gibraltar lawyer he had known for a long time – who could reach out to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, for help.

Samuelson went on to tell Drel that the previous autumn he had “discovered the location of the liquid assets of the holding company” during a meeting with the Menatep team in London and “insisted very loudly that it was imperative to move these at once” because of the threat of an imminent freezing order by the Russians.

In playing the game of cat and mouse between Yukos and Russian investigators, Samuelson told the Russian lawyer he had “inside sources in many corners” and was “monitoring actions and requests emanating from Moscow closely every day”.

“I am the master at where to put liquid assets securely (and how to structure such things),” he said.

Drel’s short visit to London the month after Curtis’ death was a whirlwind of meetings with lawyers, company officials and lobbyists. Yet according to documents seen by the I-Unit, Drel still found time to schedule a meeting with Samuelson on April 28. What became of Samuelson’s offer to step up amidst the chaos is not known, nor of his plans to solve some of Yukos’ challenges.

Samuelson later claimed to undercover reporters from the I-Unit that he had warned Khodorkovsky about the risk of arrest he faced over his fight with Putin.

“I told him it was going to happen; he didn’t want to listen. They [the Russians] didn’t want to arrest him. They wanted him to leave, but he decided to stay. So, they arrested him, and they convicted him of something he never did. They said it was tax evasion. Bulls**t, he was the one person who had paid his taxes.”

Khodorkovsky was tried, convicted and jailed. The Russian state effectively seized Yukos in a barely disguised raid.

So how did Samuelson know so much? How did he come to sit at the top table of oligarchs and power? To hear him tell his story in the I-Unit’s recorded interviews is to hear something of a maestro at work.

“He is a man in the shadows,” said the former business associate. “He keeps a low profile, which is one reason why he’s so successful. He plays shell games with companies, labyrinthine, complicated offshore companies… And you can never actually find out who the directors are. And that’s the whole point. Because the root of the money is what he’s protecting.”

In 1988, Valmet’s Paris office had a “walk-in”. A Russian businessman asked Samuelson’s partner at the firm whether they would be interested in financing a Moscow circus tour in the West, Catherine Belton, respected author and Russia specialist, wrote in a 2005 profile of Valmet’s role in Russia.

The Paris office director thought it must be a joke but it was the beginning of Valmet’s entry into the Soviet Union. Later, the walk-in phoned to say there were some young people in Moscow trying to start a bank; he wanted to introduce them to Valmet.

Three years later, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, all was chaos and the biggest asset grab in history was on. By then Valmet had joined with Riggs Bank, an illustrious US bank, to seek out opportunities in the former Soviet bloc. While other capitalists were scrambling to find out who to call and partner up with, Valmet already had a client in Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partners and had been working with the flannel-shirted future oligarch for more than two years.

In 1991, Platon Lebedev, Menatep’s financial director, told a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor that Riggs [meaning Riggs-Valmet] were “our teachers”.

Of Samuelson and his Valmet partners, Menatep shareholder Mikhail Brudno told then-Moscow-based Belton: “They taught us a great deal. They taught us about the principles of organising business: from both the financial and the business sides. We didn’t know anything. Until we met, we couldn’t even imagine how these business processes were built.” It was a good foot in the door for Riggs-Valmet: Menatep’s founders would become billionaires and go on to buy Yukos.

They were not Samuelson’s only Russian clients.

Samuelson claimed to undercover reporters from the I-Unit that he helped oligarch Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea football club owner, get his start in business. “I met Roman Abramovich in Moscow when a million dollars was a lot of money … Roman became a client.” Abramovich has denied having a personal relationship with Samuelson.

Even bigger and more controversial clients beckoned. In 2000, Samuelson told colleagues in a somewhat breathless note: “Our new clients are Boris Berezovsky and Arkady Patarkatsishvilli [sic]. …” The two oligarchs, close business partners who would soon fall foul of what Samuelson has called “regime change” under President Putin, who had replaced Boris Yeltsin.

He added that the two businessmen owned Russia’s fourth-biggest oil company and two-thirds of Russia’s aluminium smelters. They had “political clout… I cannot see any reason to refuse accepting BB and AP as clients.”

Badri, whose underworld name was allegedly “Badar”, was suspected – by government officials, due-diligence professionals, and experts – of being close to organised crime, particularly in Georgia where he was linked to a so-called “thief-in-law” (a major Russian criminal). Badri become Samuelson’s client and Samuelson became Badri’s personal trustee for the oligarch’s main offshore trust. The trust held hundreds of millions in assets and was a reflection of Badri’s confidence in Samuelson.

Samuelson rattled through the complex offshore structures he envisioned creating for the two men. “Other assets that we have to deal with include cars, planes (costing $70m), yachts (two presently worth about $40m), holdings in other businesses, other properties, trusts …”

The set-up fees for the first year alone, he added, were $1.6m. Valmet was doing well. And so was Samuelson. That same year, 2000, according to an internal company review, Samuelson’s salary alone was just under $300,000.

His proximity to oligarchs, and his financial dealings captured the attention of officers at an elite police agency that would focus increasingly on Samuelson, as well as Stephen Curtis’ oddly timed death in the helicopter crash.

In August 2005, the year after Curtis’ death, Dutch financial law enforcement agency FIOD-ECD raided the Dutch office of Samuelson’s firm, Mutual Trust – Valmet’s successor – carrying away boxes of documents. An adviser to Boris Berezovsky complained that while Samuelson had proved very expensive in setting up offshore structures that would frustrate inquisitive investigators, he had, ironically, kept all the documentation in one place only for it to be seized by authorities, thereby blowing the very secrecy the structures were meant to protect.

Two FIOD agents, in particular, doggedly pursued Samuelson in an investigation that lasted years, following the threads of the corporate webs spun by the trust manager. Later, in a letter sent in 2008 to a London financial investigator – and seen by the I-Unit – the FIOD agents asked: “Are there any notes made by Curtis… showing the information he possibly gave to the NCIS, especially relating to Samuelson?” The Dutch agents wanted to know if Curtis had disclosed to police any secrets about his friend Samuelson, his companies or his oligarch clients.

By 2005, Samuelson – the man with “inside sources in many corners” knew Dutch detectives were investigating him and his company: according to a previously confidential FIOD-ECD legal document, written in 2005 and obtained by the I-Unit, they suspected Samuelson was the “de facto” leader of an international organisation involved in money laundering and corruption.

Warning lights were flashing as investigations popped up across Europe. The I-Unit has seen heated emails Samuelson sent to a colleague in late 2006, spelling out impending dangers: “you and me are under suspicions [sic] of laundering money on behalf of AP [Arkadi Patarkatsishvili]”.

“You already have investigations by the Dutch, Spanish, Germans and French,” Samuelson said. He complained about the spiralling costs, stress, and unpaid bills. “AP and BB [Boris Berezovsky] are targets of investigators in the Netherlands and France, and those investigations are active and the investigators have obtained the help of the Germans and Spanish.”

Samuelson worried the US and UK might take an interest. In the emails to the same colleague, he mentioned, “the Netherlands and subsidiary Swiss investigations”, meaning the FIOD agents who asked their Swiss counterparts to raid Samuelson’s Swiss office, seize documents and interview him.

In a glimpse into Samuelson’s usually cloistered world, he added that his other clients were angry because he could not complete their work. Dutch investigators had taken “all our files” and not returned them. Samuelson underlined the risks: “The Netherlands case highlights the dangers of having clients with political exposure and why we charge appropriate trust fees.”

Dutch secrecy laws meant that little of this investigation became public, bar fleeting references in legal papers in other cases. However, Samuelson claimed the Dutch prosecutor dropped the case and “all claims against Mutual Trust Netherlands and its directors including me”. In a memo seen by the I-Unit, he mentioned he had a letter from his lawyers, Simmonds and Simmonds, confirming the case had been dropped.

Samuelson, the Teflon fiduciary, escaped the Dutch authorities but his friends, associates and clients working in and out of Russia were not so fortunate.

First, his friend and business associate Stephen Curtis had died in a crash doubts still lingered about. An inquest concluded it was an accident. A British Home Office review did not conclude foul play. But Boris Berezovsky remained suspicious, as did many others.

Then Khodorkovsky – Samuelson’s former client who he allegedly warned to get out of Russia – spent 10 years in a Siberian prison. He is out now, living in Europe, and is a vocal critic of Putin.

In 2006, another client, Berezovsky’s security adviser, Alexander Litvinenko, was murdered in London using polonium.

Then in 2008, Patarkatsishvili died at home in Surrey. Questions arose over his death – which also unleashed a bitter struggle over his fortune.

Then in 2013, Berezovsky was found hanged at home. At the inquest, the coroner returned an open verdict saying he could not prove either way whether the oligarch had died by suicide or been murdered.

In 2018, Berezovsky’s close associate Nikolai Glushkov was found strangled at home.

The coincidences are chilling. If there is a Russian “ring of death” – a trail of assassinations and suspicious deaths tracing back to Moscow – Samuelson seems to have a ringside seat.

But Samuelson is still doing the deals. Salvaging gold-laden shipwrecks off Ireland, drumming up investments in Africa, hobnobbing with senior officials in different countries – and pursuing his love of football, helping rich foreigners buy English football clubs .

The Zingarevich family, old Russian clients of his, tried to buy Everton football club in 2004 but the deal fell through after Zingarevich’s identity was leaked to a Sunday paper. In 2012, hebought Reading instead in a deal where Samuelson joined the club’s board.

In keeping with the times, Samuelson turned towards a new reservoir of billionaires: China.

First, he helped billionaire Chinese businessman Tony Xia buy England’s Aston Villa FC in 2015.

Then along came Bill – another “walk-in” – and his courteous, dependable assistant Angie. And the whole circus started again … it just so happened that they were undercover reporters from Al Jazeera’s I-Unit this time.

Christopher Samuelson’s lawyers told the I-Unit that he is an experienced businessman who built an established reputation in the financial trusts and football industries and would never take part in any deal where criminality was involved. They said that Samuelson had never been told that our fictitious Chinese investor had a criminal conviction for money laundering and bribery and that he would have ended discussions immediately had he been told of any criminality or money laundering.

A spokesman for Mikhail Khodorkovsky denied that Samuelson had advised him and said that it was “highly likely” that he had never met Samuelson.

Lawyers for Roman Abramovich described Samuelson’s claims about him as “false” and denied that he’d had any business relationship with Samuelson.

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Boris Berezovsky's billions: How the tycoon lost so much before his death

March 25, 2013 / 1:09 PM EDT / CBS/AP

LONDON How do you burn through billions?

The unexplained death of Boris Berezovsky, whose body was found Saturday inside his upscale English home, has refocused attention on the fantastic wealth racked up by Russia's ruthless oligarchs - and their propensity for spending it. Berezovsky, 67, had once been considered Russia's richest man - but by this January, a British judge was wondering whether the tycoon would be able to pay his debts.

• Boris Berezovsky, Putin foe, found dead in U.K.

To understand how one man could lose so much money, it helps to see how he made it in the first place.

FOUNDATIONS OF A FORTUNE

Berezovsky, a mathematician, made his fortune in the 1990s during the catastrophic privatization of the Soviet Union's state-run economy. That era was marked by hyperinflation, contract killings and rampant corruption. As Russia's GDP crumbled, oligarchs leveraged their ties to ruthless criminals and crooked officials to tear off huge chunks of the country's assets for themselves, draining resources and stripping factories to build fabulous fortunes.

Berezovsky - whose interests ran from automobiles to airplanes to aluminum - was one of this dark period's primary beneficiaries. He became a political operator in Russian President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle, trading on his connections to rack up assets estimated by Forbes to be worth roughly $3 billion in 1997.

"No man profited more from Russia's slide into the abyss," wrote author Paul Klebnikov in a critical profile of Berezovsky entitled, "Godfather of the Kremlin."

Eventually, the abyss began threatening Berezovsky as well.

The tycoon had been instrumental in orchestrating the accession of Yelstin's successor, Vladimir Putin, but when the new leader and Berezovsky began to clash, his political cover disintegrated. Berezovsky then fled the country in 2000, eventually claiming political asylum in Britain.

Jonathan Sanders, a journalism professor at Stony Brook University in New York and a former CBS News Moscow correspondent, interviewed Berezovsky on several occasions. He told CBS Radio News that Berezovsky's life was the stuff of spy novels.

"With a character like Boris Berezovsky, you always have to think, what's the worst that can happen, how could this be something out of a spy thriller, how could the Kremlin have wreaked its revenge on Berezovsky?" Sanders said.

LIVING LARGE IN LONDON

How much money Berezovsky really had - and how much he was able to take with him from Moscow - remains shrouded in uncertainty. Rich Russians at the time routinely stashed their money in labyrinthine offshore trusts or held assets under the names of associates or family members. Many deals weren't even put into writing.

What's clear is that the 1998 Russian financial crisis, coupled with Berezovsky's spectacular fall from political grace, had a big impact on his bottom line. Forbes estimated his post-Moscow fortune in the hundreds of millions. Rival oligarch Roman Abramovich testified in court that Berezovsky had been down to his last $1 million when he fled Russia.

If Berezovsky were strapped for cash, he didn't show it. He rode around London in a reinforced Maybach limousine and was often seen huddled with business contacts in the exclusive hotels that line London's Hyde Park. His string of oversize mansions in England, France and the Caribbean suggested he was a cut above the average millionaire.

Russian officials seemed to believe that Berezovsky had plenty of cash on hand, trying - with mixed success - to claw back some of the exile's assets. Charges are still pending against him in relation to the alleged embezzlement of some $13 million from Russia's now-defunct SBS-Agro bank. Berezovsky had also previously been convicted in absentia of bilking hundreds of millions of rubles from the airline company Aeroflot and the carmaker AvtoVaz.

THE BILLS PILE UP

Berezovsky often expressed a fondness for Britain's legal system, despite his frequent and expensive encounters with it. A search of British court records throws up roughly three dozen judgments - libel, fraud, divorce, breach of contract - involving the tycoon in some way.

Berezovsky sued a business associate over a fraudulent loan. Other business associates sued him over a botched oil deal. Berezovsky sued Forbes over an unflattering profile. He sued Russian television for suggesting he had a hand in the poisoning death of ex-Russian KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. His second wife sued him for a divorce. His girlfriend sued him for a house he'd promised her. He sued the wife of his long-time partner, Badri Patarkatsishvili, in a complicated dispute over how to split the man's assets after his death.

The sums involved were staggering. The loan deal was worth $5 million. His second divorce settlement in 2011 reportedly cost him 100 million pounds (about $154 million at the time). Patarkatsishvili's assets could be worth hundreds of millions more. The biggest lawsuit of all, against Abramovich for breach of contract and blackmail, was for a mind-boggling $5.6 billion.

Berezovsky lost the lawsuit against Abramovich last year and the judge involved stopped just short of calling him a liar. He was stuck with tens of millions of pounds in legal bills.

A FORTUNE FALTERS

Whatever the extent of Berezovsky's wealth, his expensive divorce, Patarkatsishvili's death and his paper mountain of litigation left it much reduced.

In 2008, Berezovsky was forced to sell the Darius, a 360-foot -long custom-built yacht that many believed was an attempt to compete with an even larger ship, the Eclipse, being built for Abramovich.

Earlier this month, the Times of London reported that Berezovsky was downsizing his art collection, selling off his homes, firing staff and closing his office in London's upscale Mayfair district.

In a January ruling in a dispute between Berezovsky and his ex-girlfriend, Helena Gorbunova, High Court Judge George Mann wrote that the oligarch's fortune appeared to have been spread thin.

"On the evidence, Mr. Berezovsky is a man under financial pressure," he said.

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Russian Oligarch and Critic of Putin Dies in Britain

By David M. Herszenhorn

• March 23, 2013

MOSCOW — Boris A. Berezovsky, once the richest and most powerful of the so-called oligarchs who dominated post-Soviet Russia, and a close ally of Boris N. Yeltsin who helped install Vladimir V. Putin as president but later exiled himself to London after a bitter falling out with the Kremlin, died Saturday.

He was 67 and lived near London, where last year he lost one of the largest private lawsuits in history — an epic tug-of-war over more than $5 billion with another Russian oligarch, Roman A. Abramovich, in which legal and other costs were estimated to be about $250 million.

Mr. Berezovsky’s death was first reported in a post on Facebook by his son-in-law Egor Schuppe and was confirmed by Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer who had represented him.

Mr. Dobrovinsky wrote in Russian on his Facebook page: “Just got a call from London. Boris Berezovsky has committed suicide. The man was complex. An act of desperation? Impossible to live poor? A series of blows? I am afraid that no one will know the truth.”

The Thames Valley police in Berkshire, an hour from London, said Saturday that they were investigating the “unexplained” death of a 67-year-old man, apparently Mr. Berezovsky, in Ascot.

The police statement did not name Mr. Berezovsky, but British news reports said an investigation was under way at his home. “Specially trained officers are currently at the scene, including C.B.R.N.-trained officers, who are conducting a number of searches as a precaution,” said a spokeswoman for the Thames Valley police, referring to the force’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear team. “This is to enable officers to carry out an investigation into the man’s death. The body of the man is still in the property at this time.”

In London, Mr. Berezovsky had adopted much the same style as an oligarch in Russia, with chauffeurs and bodyguards. But recent news reports said Mr. Berezovsky had begun to sell personal assets, including a yacht and a painting by Andy Warhol, “Red Lenin,” to pay debts related to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, in which Mr. Berezovsky brought a claim against Mr. Abramovich in a dispute over the sale of shares in Sibneft, an oil company, and other assets, ended in a spectacular defeat .

In her ruling, the judge in the case, Elizabeth Gloster, called Mr. Berezovsky an “unimpressive and inherently unreliable witness” and at times a dishonest one. By contrast, the judge said Mr. Abramovich had been “a truthful, and on the whole reliable, witness.”

Mr. Berezovsky’s legal troubles worsened recently with a claim by his former girlfriend, Elena Gorbunova, that he owed her about $8 million from the sale of a house they owned in Surrey, England. The judge also ordered him to pay more than $53 million of Mr. Abramovich’s fees.

A friend of the tycoon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said Mr. Berezovsky said he had been “extremely depressed” for at least six months since losing his case. “He was a great believer in British justice, and he felt it let him down,” the friend said.

A spokesman for Mr. Putin said Mr. Berezovsky had recently sent a letter asking President Putin for forgiveness and permission to return to Russia. “Some time ago, maybe a couple of months, Berezovsky sent Vladimir Putin a letter, written by himself, in which he admitted that he had made a lot of mistakes,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on the Russia 24 television channel. “He asked Putin for forgiveness for the errors to be able to return home.”

Mr. Peskov said that he did not know Mr. Putin’s reaction, but that “news of anyone’s death, no matter what kind of person they were, cannot arouse any positive emotions.”

Mr. Berezovsky was a Soviet mathematician who after the fall of Communism went into business and figured out how to skim profits off what was then Russian’s largest state-owned carmaker. Along with spectacular wealth, he accumulated enormous political influence, becoming a close ally of Mr. Yeltsin’s.

With Mr. Yeltsin’s political career fading, Mr. Berezovsky helped engineer the rise of Mr. Putin, an obscure former K.G.B. agent and onetime aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg who became president of Russia in 2000 and last May returned to the presidency for a third term.

After his election, Mr. Putin began a campaign of tax claims against a group of rich and powerful Russians, including Mr. Berezovsky and Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon, who remains jailed in Russia.

Mr. Berezovsky fled to London, where he eventually won political asylum and at one point raised tensions by calling for a coup against Mr. Putin.

David E. Hoffman, the author of “The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia,” an exploration of the role of such magnates in the era after the breakup of the Soviet Union, said Mr. Berezovsky stood out for seeking not only wealth but political clout.

“Boris Berezovsky was among that wave of oligarchs who realized that great fortunes were to be made in the massive sell-off of assets in the new Russia,” Mr. Hoffman said by e-mail on Saturday. “While many of his peers also saw the opportunity, Berezovsky was more focused than most on the role that politics would play. He realized the need to co-opt those in power in order to make deals. He did it from the early days with automobiles and later with oil.”

Mr. Berezovsky had an outsize, if hardly always benevolent, role in post-Soviet Russia.

George Soros, a financier and a critic of the Russian oligarchs, had likened them to 19th-century American robber barons. But if that was an apt metaphor, the power and influence of these new tycoons was amplified by the legal and political vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Berezovsky amassed his fortune at first in automobiles, including a business he formed in 1993 with Aleksandr Voloshin, who would later become Mr. Yeltsin’s chief of staff. But like other oligarchs, Mr. Berezovsky’s interests spread across many sectors of the post-Soviet Russian economy, to oil; media; and Aeroflot, the Russian airline.

He survived an assassination attempt in 1994, a car bombing in which his driver was killed.  

The assassination attempt connected him to a K.G.B. officer, Alexander V. Litvinenko, who was poisoned by the radioactive isotope polonium 210 in London in November 2006.

Mr. Litvinenko, then working for the F.S.B., the domestic successor to the K.G.B., was assigned to investigate the blast, and Mr. Berezovsky became his mentor and later his employer.

Mr. Berezovsky helped Mr. Litvinenko flee Russia in 2000 before he, too, left the country to seek asylum in London.

On the day he was poisoned, Nov. 1, 2006, Mr. Litvinenko went from a meeting with several Russians at a hotel in central London to Mr. Berezovsky’s nearby office. There he met with a Chechen exile, Akhmed Zakayev, another Berezovsky protégé, and the two drove together to adjacent homes financed by Mr. Berezovsky, in North London.

After Mr. Litvinenko’s death, and with his wealth dwindling during his time in London, Mr. Berezovsky slowly withdrew his financial support for Mr. Litvinenko’s widow as she pressed for an inquest into the death, now scheduled to begin in May.

Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born in Moscow on Jan. 23, 1946, to Abram Berezovsky, a civil engineer who worked in construction, and Anna Gelman, at a time when the Soviet Union was recovering from World War II.

He studied forestry and mathematics at the Moscow Forestry Engineering Institute. He worked as an engineer and researcher until the late 1980s.

In the mid-1990s, Mr. Berezovsky served on Russia’s security council, only to be dismissed from that post by Mr. Yeltsin in 1997.

Mr. Berezovsky and Mr. Putin had been close, and Mr. Berezovsky aided Mr. Putin’s rise to the presidency. But signs came quickly that Mr. Berezovsky had fallen out of favor. In October 2000, just 10 months after Mr. Yeltsin’s resignation, Mr. Berezovsky was ordered to vacate a spacious government country house and to return the government plates on his limousine. He left Russia for Britain that year.

In March 2003, the British authorities arrested Mr. Berezovsky and said they were beginning a process that could lead to his extradition. But he was granted political asylum later that year apparently after the British determined that Russia sought him solely on political grounds.

In 2007, he was convicted of fraud charges by a Russian court in absentia and sentenced to six years in prison, and had potentially faced prosecution in at least 10 other cases.

The sharpest blow to his wealth came from the failed lawsuit against Mr. Abramovich.

On the day last August when the court ruled against him, Mr. Berezovsky attempted an air of nonchalance. “Life is life,” he said, flanked by bodyguards, before driving off in a Mercedes.

A previous version of this obituary, along with the headline, misstated the location of Boris Berezovsky’s death. He died at his home outside London, not in the city itself.

How we handle corrections

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, Alan Cowell from Venice, and Ravi Somaiya from New York.

A Brief History of Superyachts

And how they explain the world..

Tim Murphy January+February 2024 Issue

James Clapham

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When the US targeted Russia’s oligarchs after the invasion of Ukraine, the trail of assets kept leading to our own backyard. Not only had our nation become a haven for shady foreign money, but we were also incubating a familiar class of yacht-owning, industry-dominating, resource-extracting billionaires. In the  January + February 2024  issue of our magazine, we investigate the rise of American Oligarchy—and what it means for the rest of us. You can read all the pieces  here .

The luxury yacht may be the world’s most exclusive form of transportation. But there are only a hundred-some that meet the definition of a gigayacht—a pleasure craft 295 feet or longer. Their opaque ownership records offer a glimpse of modern wealth and power: Over two dozen are linked to Gulf royals, businessmen, or states, and 20 to citizens (past or current) of the former Soviet Union. At least 23 have reportedly belonged to Americans, including founders of Microsoft, Netscape, Amazon, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. The widow of a German retailer who thrived under Hitler owned one; a UK tax exile and a Formula 1 dad still do. Yugoslav strongman Tito’s old yacht makes the list; Dominican dictator Trujillo’s does too. Take a cruise through the history of the vessels and their—somewhat—more modest sister ships.

1895: Nineteen years before World War I, the future King Edward VII of England punches his nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm II, in the face, after the German’s 121-foot yacht, Meteor II , defeats the royal Britannia in a race off the Isle of Wight.

1954: Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis ushers in an era of postwar one-upmanship with his 325-foot Christina O . It features a pool that converts into a dance floor, furniture made from whale foreskin, and pornographic carvings.

1963: During his final birthday party aboard the presidential yacht Sequoia , JFK chases future Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee’s wife, Antoinette, into the bathroom and gropes her. “I guess I was pretty surprised, but I was kind of flattered, and appalled, too,” she says later. The ship’s visitor logs are destroyed after Kennedy’s assassination.

1984: King Fahd of Saudi Arabia builds the record-breaking 482-foot Prince Abdulaziz .

1987: Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) drops out of the presidential race just before photos emerge of him with model Donna Rice aboard the yacht Monkey Business .

1988: Donald Trump acquires Nabila , which previously belonged to the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and was featured in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again . He renames it Trump Princess , adds a disco, and changes the helipad’s “H” to a “T.”

1991: After one of Trump’s casinos files for bankruptcy, he sells Trump Princess to his bank—which flips it to a Saudi prince. A new yacht, the Trump Princess II , which he boasted would be “something in excess of 400 feet long, closer to 500 feet,” is never built.

British publisher Robert Maxwell’s body is found in the Atlantic Ocean, where he had been cruising on a 180-footer named for his daughter—the Lady Ghislaine . The vessel is eventually resold to Anna Murdoch, Rupert’s second wife.

1994: At a cocktail party on the oligarch Petr Aven’s yacht in the Caribbean, Boris Berezovsky meets Roman Abramovich, calling him a “nice boy who wanted to discuss commercial projects.” He and Abramovich begin working together to acquire Sibneft, a Russian state oil company.

1997: Construction ends on The Limited and Victoria’s Secret owner Les Wexner’s ­316-foot Limitless . The project was overseen by his good friend Jeffrey Epstein.

1999: Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison buys the 191-foot Izanami from a Japanese seller. He changes the name to Ronin , he said later , after “the local newspapers started pointing out that Izanami was ‘I’m a Nazi’ spelled backwards.”

2001: Months before Enron files for bankruptcy, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling asks a company executive for advice on finding a yacht broker. “This industry is known for crooks and thieves,” he warns Skilling.

2002: House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) promises to strip “corporate kingpins of their ill-gotten gains,” after scandals rock Enron and WorldCom. “We’re coming after the yacht.”

2003: DeLay charges donors $500,000 a pop for tickets to a yacht cruise.

2005: Ellison shoots down rumors he issued orders midconstruction to have his newest yacht, the 454-foot Rising Sun , extended to outdo Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s recently launched 414-foot Octopus .

Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) pleads guilty to federal bribery charges after being caught living rent-free on a yacht, called the Duke-Stir , that was moored in Washington, DC, and owned by a defense contractor.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s 531-foot Dubai surpasses Prince Abdulaziz as the world’s longest yacht.

2006: Media mogul Barry Diller reveals the world’s longest sailing yacht, the 305-foot Eos , whose prow features a 9-foot-tall sculpture of his wife, Diane von Furstenberg.

2007: Diller opens a Manhattan corporate headquarters­­ at a Frank Gehry­–designed building that itself has been likened to a sailboat . It’s across the street from where Eos ties up.

2008: George Osborne, the No. 2 official in the UK’s Conservative Party, relaxes on Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska’s yacht while vacationing with his family in Greece. He denies an accusation that he solicited funds, explaining in a statement that they discussed “Russian history” and drank tea.

2009: As his marriage falls apart, Tiger Woods retreats to a 155-foot yacht called Privacy .

2010: Abramovich’s new ship, Eclipse , surpasses Dubai as the world’s longest yacht. The 533-foot vessel features a submarine, anti-missile systems, and lasers to thwart paparazzi .

2011: During an unsuccessful suit seeking $5 billion he believed Abramovich owed him from the sale of Sibneft, an exiled Berezovsky claims that his former partner helped purchase the yacht Olympia for Vladimir Putin. When the BBC publishes a supporting account from another Russian businessman five years later, Abramovich’s lawyers dismiss the allegation as “a rehash of speculation and rumours.”

2012: As GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney faces criticism for holding investment funds in the Cayman Islands, his campaign invites donors to party on Cracker Bay . The ship, owned by the founder of The Villages retirement community, flies the Cayman Islands’ flag.

2013: UAE leader Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan launches the 593-foot Azzam , surpassing the Eclipse .

2014: The Wall Street Journal reports that Ellison has basketball hoops on “at least two of his yachts” and had someone follow in a smaller boat “to retrieve balls that go overboard.”

2016: Allen’s Tatoosh drags its anchor through a protected zone in the Cayman Islands, destroying 14,000 square feet of coral.

2017: After leaving office, Barack and Michelle Obama retreat to the South Pacific aboard David Geffen’s yacht, where they’re joined by Oprah, Tom Hanks, and Bruce Springsteen.

Abramovich’s business partner, Eugene Shvidler, blocks views of the Statue of Liberty while anchoring his 370-foot Le Grand Bleu in New York Harbor for a month.

Addressing the national Boy Scout Jamboree, Trump tells an anecdote widely assumed to allude to sex parties on a yacht belonging to the developer of the Levittown suburbs. “You’re Boy Scouts, so I’m not going to tell you what he did,” he said. “But you know life.”

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) buys a yacht and on the same day votes to cut taxes on yachts.

2018: Rupert Murdoch is airlifted to UCLA after collapsing on a yacht trip with his fourth wife, Jerry Hall. “He kept almost dying,” a source tells Vanity Fair .

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott designates a billionaire donor’s marina as a special anti-­poverty opportunity zone.

Someone unties Seaquest , a superyacht belonging to Trump administration Secretary of Education (and billionaire) Betsy DeVos, causing it to crash into a dock on Lake Erie.

Businessman Jho Low, who financed The Wolf of Wall Street , is accused of taking part in a $4.5 billion scheme to siphon Malaysian state development funds and using some to purchase a $250 million yacht.

2019: Actress Lori Loughlin is arrested in a college admissions bribery scheme . Her daughter, USC student Olivia Jade, is vacationing in the Bahamas— on a yacht belonging to USC board of trustees chair Rick Caruso.

Following an investigation into corruption in the Nigerian oil industry, the US government auctions off businessman Kolawole Aluko’s Galactica Star , six years after Jay-Z rented out the vessel for Beyoncé’s 32nd birthday. A former Enron unit attempts to claim a portion of the proceeds.

Clarence Thomas visits an Indonesian preserve for Komodo dragons with billionaire Harlan Crow on the conservative megadonor’s Michaela Rose .

ArtNet reports that a $450 million (reputed) da Vinci that was supposed to be in an Abu Dhabi museum has been spotted hanging in Mohammed bin Salman’s personal yacht, Serene .

Kylie Jenner holds her 22nd birthday party on Low’s yacht, now under new ownership.

2020: “[I]solated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus,” Geffen writes on Instagram from Rising Sun , which he purchased in 2010. “I’m hoping everybody is staying safe.”

Steve Bannon is arrested off the coast of Connecticut by US Postal Police while aboard the fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui’s 150-foot Lady May .

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. dresses up as a character from the TV show Trailer Park Boys for a costume party aboard a NASCAR mogul’s yacht. He later posts a photo of himself to Instagram with his fly unzipped and his arms around his wife’s assistant.

2021: NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre testifies that he took refuge on Illusions , a Hollywood producer’s yacht, after the Newtown and Parkland mass shootings. “I remember getting there going, ‘Thank God I’m safe, nobody can get me here.’”

During a bitter divorce, the Daily Mail reports that Tatiana Akhmedova, wife of the Russian Azerbaijani billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, hired a team of British special forces veterans to seize his yacht, Luna , in an effort to enforce a Marshall Islands court ruling. They settle instead, and he keeps the boat.

Port Azure , dubbed the world’s first harbor designed exclusively for megayachts, opens in Gocek, Turkey. It bills itself as a place where “problems big and small go away.”

2022: Amid reports a historic bridge will be dismantled so Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ newly built Koru can leave Rotterdam’s shipyards, residents threaten to pelt the sailboat with eggs . The city changes plans.

A Ukrainian mechanic is arrested in Mallorca for attempting to sink a vessel owned by his boss, a Russian arms dealer.

Biden promises oligarchs he’s going to “take their ill-begotten gains” after the invasion of Ukraine. “We’re going to seize their yachts.”

Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder avoids a congressional subpoena on the team’s misogynistic culture while cruising the Mediterranean on his yacht, Lady S .

Missing Russian superyachts are spotted waiting out sanctions at Port Azure.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) criticizes Joe Biden for vacationing in Delaware while vacationing on a luxury yacht in Italy.

After sailing through Fiji on his yacht Aquarius , briefly retired Disney CEO Bob Iger tells friends he misses his wife and is bored with life.

New York Republican congressional candidate George Santos brokers a $19 million deal to sell a superyacht called Namaste to a Long Island car dealer.

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX reveals in court filings that founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund once spent $2.5 million on a yacht, which a top executive named Soak My Deck .

2023: Bezos takes possession of Koru . The $500 million, 417-foot sailboat comes with a bust that resembles his fiancée Lauren Sánchez—and its own second, 246-foot “shadow” support yacht with crew quarters and a hangar for the helicopter she pilots.

After divorcing Jerry Hall, Rupert Murdoch vacations on the Christina O with Abramovich’s ex-mother-in-law.

As TV and movie writers and actors strike, the Wall Street Journal reports that Iger, now back at work, has been regaling visitors to his Burbank office about the new, longer yacht he’s building.

Measuring Contest

Iconic gigayachts through the years

1931: Sea Cloud , Marjorie Post: 359 ft.

1981: Atlantis II , Stavros Niarchos: 380 ft.

2003: Octopus , Paul Allen: 414 ft.

2005: Rising Sun , Larry Ellison: 454 ft.

2010: Eclipse , Roman Abramovich: 533 ft.

2013: Azzam , Sheikh Khalifa: 593 ft.

Illustrations by Anthony Calvert

The Few, The Loud

Some famous faces aboard gigayachts

Steven Spielberg reeled out his anchor off Cannes.

A part of Katy Perry got stuck exiting a dinghy on her way to Barry Diller’s yacht.

Mohammed bin Salman purchased his yacht, Serene , just hours after he saw it.

Jerry Jones made a draft pick aboard his Bravo Eugenia to deepen the Cowboys’ bench.

Mariah Carey was engaged to a gigayacht owner, before the fantasy ended.

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• INSIDER REVIEWS
• TECH BUYING GUIDES

The World's Most Expensive Yachts (And The Billionaires Who Own Them)

10. al mirqab is worth $250 million..

9. Pelorus is worth $300 million (tie).

Initially built for a Saudi businessman, Russian billionaire bought the megayacht Pelorus in 2004. His ex-wife received the ship in their divorce settlement, and Hollywood movie mogul David Geffen bought Pelorus for $300 million in 2011.

The 115-meter yacht has two helipads and a garage full of toys, including jet skis.

9. Al Said is worth $300 million (tie).

Al Said was built for Qaboos bin Said Al Said, the billionaire Sultan of Oman. The massive, 155-meter yacht has space for 70 guests and 154 crew.

It has a helicopter landing pad, elevator, and concert space that can accomodate a 50-piece orchestra.

8. Dubai is worth $300 million (tie).

At 162 meters, Dubai is one of the largest yachts in the world. It was commissioned by Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei, but put on hold for a decade before being acquired by Sheikh Mohammed Rashid al-Maktoum, the Emir of Dubai.

Dubai can accomodate 115 guests and crew , and has seven decks, a swimming pool, a squash room, helicopter pad, and even a small submarine.

6. Radiant is worth $320 million.

Originally commissioned by Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, this 360-foot yacht was sold to Abdulla Al Futtaim, a billionaire car dealer from the United Arab Emirates. Radiant's amenities put a James Bond twist on the typical superyacht experience.

It's equipped with sonic guns that would burst the eardrums of attackers, along with water cannons that could sink an approaching boat from 100 yards away. There's even a smaller speedboat designed specifically for a quick escape. Radiant has a jacuzzi, gym, and garage for tenders, as well as space for 20 guests.

5. Serene is worth $330 million.

Russian vodka distributor Yuri Scheffler owns this 440-foot yacht, which has turquoise neon lights that give it a nighttime glow.

It has a combined 48,000 square feet of covered space on its seven decks, including indoor and outdoor pools, 12 staterooms, and an outdoor screening room. Scheffler purchased the Italian-designed yacht for $330 million in 2011.

4. A is worth $390 million.

This elegant, Philippe Starck-designed superyacht belongs to Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko. Among its luxurious amenities are bath faucets worth $40,000, staircase banisters worth $60,000, and a bed that rotates with the touch of a button, allowing for perfect views of the sunrise and sunset.

A has had its fair share of controversies, however, as the Melnichenkos sued Dutch paint corporation Akzo Nobel, claiming the yacht's paint is not as reflective as they had requested.

3. Topaz is worth $520 million.

The 147-meter Topaz was built in 2012 by Lurssen Yachts. It cost an estimated $527 million to build, and has a jacuzzi, helicopter landing pad, garage for tenders, fitness center, and movie theater.

Topaz is owned by Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, who is worth around $8.7 billion, according to Wealth-X.

2. Azzam is worth $600 million.

Azzam is a staggering 590 feet long (longer than some commercial cruise ships) and owned by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates.

It took German shipbuilders Lürssen Yachts four years to build this behemoth of a ship, which is rumored to have up to 50 private suites. According to Wealth-X, the $627 million purchase was only about 3.5% of Sheikh Khalif's net worth of $18 billion.

1. Eclipse is worth $1 billion.

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich purchased the 536-foot-long Eclipse in 2010, when it still held the title for world's largest yacht.

Eclipse has two helipads , a disco, cinema, hair salon, and restaurant, plus it's rumored to have a laser defense system against paparazzi trying to photograph high-profile guests.

This tycoon loves adventure.

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European nations resurrect, expand compulsory military service in face of russian threat.

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Some European countries have resurrected or expanded their compulsory military service after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — a once-unthinkable policy shift fueled by the notion that they’d have to respond quickly if the Russian bear trudges across their borders.

Many nations ended their drafts after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. But as the risk of a widening war rises, alarm bells have sounded in countries near the Russian border, including the smaller Scandinavian and Baltic states most likely to be threatened.

“We are coming to the realization that we may have to adjust the way we mobilize for war and adjust the way we produce military equipment and we recruit and train personnel,” said Robert Hamilton, head of Eurasia research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former US Army officer, to CNN on Sunday.

“It is tragically true that here we are in 2024 and we are grappling with the questions of how to mobilize millions of people to be thrown into a meatgrinder of a war potentially,” Hamilton said.

“But this is where Russia has put us.”  

The tiny nation of Latvia — with its just under 2 million people wedged between Russia and the Baltic Sea — is the latest to reintroduce conscription, which it abolished in 2006.

As of Jan. 1, 2024, men must register for the draft as soon as they turn 18.

The country’s citizens pushed back at first, according to Arturs Pīlācis, a 20-year-old student. But that faded as the need to defend their homeland became clear, CNN said.

“There wasn’t really an option where we can stand by and think things will go on as they were before because of the unprovoked aggression in Ukraine,” he told the network.

In Norway — which already has mandatory conscription — elected officials presented in April a long-term plan to double the defense budget and draft 20,000 soldiers, employees and reservists to serve in the armed forces.

“We need a defense that is fit for purpose in the emerging security environment,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said.

Some of the conscripted seem to agree.

“I am willing to fight for my country if need be because I believe in the values that the Norwegian society is built on, and I believe those values of inclusion and equality and democracy are worth fighting for,” said student Jens Bartnes, a 26-year-old who finished his military training about seven years ago.

Lithuania, another Baltic state with a long-simmering fear of Russian invasion, has seen similar changes since it reintroduced conscription in 2015, CNN said.

Not everyone there is fond of the draft, according to Paulius Vaitiekus, president of Lithuania’s National Students’ Union.

But there has been “a shift in the mindset of the youth towards being more active, although not necessarily through conscripting,” he said, adding that students have been sending supplies to the Ukrainian front to help the embattled nation fight off its Russian aggressor.

Other countries such as Finland, Norway and Sweden have small standing armies but also the ability to call up thousands — and sometimes hundreds of thousands — of already-trained volunteers at a moment’s notice.

The Finnish Defense Force, for example, only has about 13,000 active members. But it can activate nearly a million reservists — and 280,000 of those can respond immediately, CNN said.

That makes it a good example of how to mix a small professional army with a mammoth amount of civilian reinforcements, Hamilton said.

That model worked well against the Russians in the past, specifically when the country nearly fought the Soviet Union to a standstill during a series of savage wars that ended with the Moscow Armistice in 1944.

Germany has also sought to reinvigorate its military, which has not been a priority since the country’s defeat in World War II.

This year, the nation updated its plans to respond to a war in Europe. And last month, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius proposed a new voluntary military service so the country would be “ready for war by 2029.”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization — a k a NATO — is also trying to up its game in response to the Russian threat.

“Since 2014, NATO has undergone the most significant transformation in our collective defense in a generation,” rep Farah Dakhlallah told CNN.

“We have put in place the most comprehensive defense plans since the Cold War, with currently more than 500,000 troops at high readiness.”

The alliance doesn’t tell its members whether to conscript citizens, Dakhlallah said. But about a third do, and others are now weighing it.

“The important thing is that allies continue to have capable armed forces to protect our territory and our populations,” Dakhlallah said.

Retired US Gen. Wesley Clark said Putin’s campaign of open war against Ukraine — with the goal of recreating the Soviet empire — should be a wake-up call.

“So we’ve now got a war in Europe that we never thought we would see again,” Clark, who also served as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told CNN.

“Whether this is a new Cold War or an emerging hot war is unclear,” he continued.

Still, “it’s a very imminent warning to NATO that we’ve got to rebuild our defenses.”

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