Oligarch Alexey Mordashov superyacht sailing into stormy waters in Cape Town
The mayor of Cape Town calls on the South Africa’s government to block the docking in its port of the superyacht to prevent the city from becoming ‘a haven for Russia’s nefarious elite’.
The mayor of Cape Town has called on South Africa’s government to block the docking in its port of a sanctioned oligarch’s $783m superyacht to prevent the city from becoming “a haven for Russia’s nefarious elite”.
The 142-metre vessel, built for Alexey Mordashov, one of Russia’s richest men, is on course for the tip of Africa from Hong Kong, where its recent arrival prompted Washington to question the “transparency of the business environment” in the Chinese-run city.
Geordin Hill-Lewis, the mayor of Cape Town, is determined that the superyacht Nord, which has two helipads, mini-submarines and 20 en suite staterooms, should not set a precedent in Cape Town.
“As far as [we] know Alexey Mordashov is on board his yacht and I don’t want Cape Town to give safe harbour to someone who has been sanctioned and who should not be given refuge as a guest of South Africa, which has a moral duty to protest unjust war,” Hill-Lewis told The Times.
However, South Africa’s government said on Tuesday that it had “no reason” to apply sanctions brought against Mordashov and that his yacht was free to dock at its ports. “South Africa has no legal obligation to abide by sanctions imposed by the US and EU,” Vincent Magwenya, President Ramaphosa’s spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday.
“South Africa’s obligations with respect to sanctions relate only to those that are specifically adopted by the United Nations. Currently, there are no UN-imposed sanctions on the particular individual,” Magwenya added, in an echo of the justification given by John Lee, Hong Kong’s leader, when the yacht docked in Hong Kong.
More than a dozen Russian-linked yachts worth a combined $3.5bn bill have been seized by US, British and European authorities since their imposition of sanctions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Hill-Lewis’s opposition Democratic Alliance party has condemned the failure by President Ramaphosa to criticise Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. In March, Ramaphosa blamed Nato’s eastward expansion for instability. Naledi Pandor, the foreign minister, complained of the West’s “bullying” on Ukraine-related issues during a meeting in August with Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state.
Members of the governing African National Congress party’s youth wing were observers in sham referendums held in occupied regions of Ukraine last month.
The ANC had strong ties to the former Soviet Union, which supported its anti-apartheid operations. Cape Town is a magnet for shady characters drawn to its five-star hotels, natural beauty and poor policing that has been weakened by years of a corrupt national government. It has become the African hub of Black Axe, Nigeria’s mafia. “We have enough gangsters in our city, we don’t need any more,” Hill-Lewis said.
Embarrassed by their government’s stance, a group of South African lawyers are working with plaintiffs from Ukraine on a court order to seize Nord, which costs pounds 200,000 a day to run. The vessel is due to arrive at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront on November 9, according to the MarineTraffic ship tracking site. A representative for Mordashov told Bloomberg that he remained in Moscow, denying suggestions he was the latest wealthy Russian businessmen to flee the country.
The Times
More Coverage
Yoga, wellness and death: check into The White Lotus
The super-rich have moved on to Thailand for the third series of Mike White’s hit thriller. Its stars talk about their trip of a lifetime.
UK’s island deal to avoid ‘missile crisis’
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s deal to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is necessary to avoid setting off ‘a serious confrontation’ in the Indian Ocean, a Foreign Office minister says.