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Buyers wanted:
The luxury yacht "Axioma" will be auctioned
Photo: TheYachtPhoto.com / IMAGO
The auction of the luxury yacht owned by the Russian oligarch
Dimitri Pumpyansky (58)
in Gibraltar has met with enormous interest.
As the competent court of the British territory announced on Tuesday, 63 bids were submitted for the "Axioma".
The bidding phase is now complete, now the buyer will be decided.
The sale could be completed in "between 10 and 14 days," the court said.
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Steel oligarch in trouble: Dmitry Pumpyansky may
have to say goodbye to his yacht
Photo: Pavel Lisitsyn / SNA / IMAGO
The 72-meter-long ship was seized in March as part of the sanctions imposed by Britain on Russia for the war of aggression against Ukraine.
In June, a court in Gibraltar ordered the "Axioma" to be auctioned off at the "highest possible price".
Not included in the auction are the bottles of wine and other alcohol from the yacht's bar, which is estimated to be worth €150,000.
The ship, built in 2013, is 72 meters long, sleeps 12 guests in six cabins and is valued at £63 million (€74 million), although a lower price was expected at the auction, according to Bloomberg.
It features an infinity pool and a 3D cinema.
With the confiscation of Pumpyansky's yacht, the judiciary in the small British region on the southern tip of Spain followed a complaint by the US bank JP Morgan.
In December 2021, the bank granted a loan of 20.5 million euros to a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Among the owners of this company was a Cypriot company, which in turn was owned by Pumpyansky.
JP Morgan considered Pumpyansky's listing on the UK sanctions list against Russia a breach of the loan agreement.
As a result, the bank in Gibraltar applied to seize and sell the Maltese-flagged yacht.
JP Morgan is demanding that the proceeds from the sale be used to repay the loan.
Pumpianski is head of the largest Russian pipeline manufacturer TMK (annual sales in 2021: 429 billion rubles, i.e. around 5.1 billion euros at the exchange rate from the beginning of 2022).
The US magazine "Forbes" estimates Pumpyansky's fortune at two billion dollars.
There are EU sanctions against him in connection with the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
Because of the Ukraine war, several European countries, including Spain, Italy and France, have confiscated yachts owned by Russian oligarchs.
cr/afp