Putin called the arrest of Russian businessmen’s yachts a “lesson”

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian entrepreneurs should have kept their yachts in Russia so that foreign law enforcement agencies would not arrest them due to sanctions. The President noted that he “warned” businessmen about the consequences of keeping property outside Russian jurisdiction, and the current situation would be a “lesson” for them.

“I told a lot of people in my time, you know: you run around defending your interests. Something was arrested there – bills, boats, and so on. Warned about it. It would be better if these boats were kept here, and the money would be invested not in foreign assets, but in the development of Russian infrastructure. Nothing would be lost, everything would be here, in the Motherland. And they would have received profits from the money invested,” the head of state said during the WEF-2022.

After the start of the military operation in Ukraine and the introduction of anti-Russian sanctions, European authorities began to seize the property of sanctioned Russian businessmen, in particular, their yachts. In May, Italian Minister of Economy and Finance Daniele Franco approved a decree to freeze the Scheherazade yacht, which a number of media outlets associate with the Russian president.

Andrey Sapozhnikov