That 348 foot superyacht named Amadea
was seized from a Russian oligarch by the United States Justice Department
back in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Now, US taxpayers are footing the bill to maintain it
to the tune of millions of dollars.
Okay, as it sits idle in a port off of San Diego.
Now, the yacht was taken from Suleiman Kerimov, who is a Russian
who made his fortune in gold.
Okay.
Prosecutors allege that he violated US sanctions by using the US banking system
to cover the expenses for the vessel.
Now, federal prosecutors have asked a judge for permission to sell the vessel,
saying its expenses are excessive and has cost the government $20 million,
according to recent court filings.
The recent appraisal values it, meaning the yacht at $230 million,
according to the US Marshals Service.
Now, the monthly costs total to roughly $600,000 to maintain the yacht.
Yachts are expensive, man. It's not just the cost of the yacht.
Maintaining it is so expensive. So. Plus there's another $144,000
in insurance, according to court records.
We're even insuring it.
- These are all monthly expenses. - We're insuring the yacht.
Yeah, yeah, if you got it.
Apparently, if you have a $230 million yacht, you got to insure it, and they
pay 144,000 a month just for insurance.
With occasional one off fees to cover dry docking expenses, because, of course,
it adds another $178,000 a month, placing the overall bill
at $922,000 a month, the record said.
So if we there's a apparently there's a problem.
If we stop maintaining it, we as American taxpayers
must maintain the yacht must maintain it.
Can we go on it if we're paying for it?
- How fun was that? - Really good point.
How fun would that be if they did, like a little lottery and said, hey,
since we're paying $922,000 a month,
110, 100, whatever the number is, Americans get to go on that yacht.
Once, a week, once a month. Whatever.
How awesome would that be?
Then all of a sudden, the American people would love their government.
It needs to be treated as a public entity, as long as we're paying for it,
for the maintenance of it.
And so why? Why are we forced to maintain that yacht?
Well, because if we don't maintain the yacht, it will lose value.
And right now, the government is apparently going through a process
to be able to sell the yacht.
Right.
And remember, it's worth quite a bit $230 million.
- Yeah. - Jesus.
So it is excessive for taxpayers to pay nearly $1 million per month
to maintain the Ahmadiyya when these expenses could be reduced
to zero through interlocutory sale.
And that's what the prosecutors are arguing in a court filing.
But now there's a battle over who even owned the yacht in the first place,
which could disrupt the government's efforts to sell it.
So attorneys, an attorney for.
I don't want to say his name because I'm going to mess it up.
But attorneys for Edward Khudainatov,
a Russian CEO who has not been sanctioned, says that he owns the yacht and he's
he has sought to take the possession, take back possession of the boat.
His lawyers have objected to the United States government's
efforts to sell the yacht.
So there's a bit of a court battle happening.
And so his attorneys refused to pay the ongoing maintenance costs.
As long as the government pursues a sale and forfeiture, however, they say their
client will reimburse the US government for the more than two, $20 million
already spent to maintain the yacht if it's returned to its proper owner.
But the US still believes that Kerimov is actually the rightful owner,
not this new guy who popped up and said, no, no, it's my yacht.
Yeah, yeah, it's super sus that the new guy who isn't under sanctions
claims that it's his yacht?
Gee, I wonder if he'll sell it back to the other guy later
after we give it to him like suckers.
But we're not, so that's good.
So I just want to go off on, rich folks for a second.
Yeah. Do it.
So, look, I don't get the need for a private jet.
First class is so great that it's superfluous.
It's gratuitous.
Right, I get it, but it's it's such overkill.
There's a building in India that, that was, the most valuable house
in the world for a while.
I don't know if it still is, but it looks like a commercial building,
and it's gigantic.
But it's someone's house. I hate it.
I don't know why you need the 17th floor and you're building your house.
Looks like a commercial real estate. I think it's like this is so gratuitous.
Have you ever seen. Hold on, hold on.
But I like yachts. Like, I like first class.
When I was on this, many times when I was at MSNBC, I used to fly first class.
It was amazing, right? Yachts are super fun.
Who doesn't want to go on a boat that's beautiful and and and huge, etc.
But these boats, do you sell that yacht? What?
It's gigantic. Why do you need like that?
Could fit hundreds of people on it. Why do you need it to be that big?
And I'll tell you the answer to that question.
It's because they're competing with other billionaires, and whoever has the bigger
yacht they think has the bigger, right.
So that's how they see idiots.
That's why they spend so much money on these yachts that they barely go on.
I mean, Bezos paid over $500 million for his yacht, and it was sitting in a dock
for years and years.
They couldn't even get it out of the European country that it was in.
More money, more problems. Okay.
Like, I don't I just I don't want to have too many responsibilities,
financially speaking.
Like I just want like a modest little home with like my closest neighbor
maybe five miles away.
I don't you don't want them to be too far, right?
There could be an emergency. You might need them.
And a garden. I want a garden.
Like simple things. Simple as my dad would say.
Sample. Okay.
- The woman's would like sample things. - Simple.
Like, I just want to enjoy time with my family and my dog and have a garden.
Like the simple things in life. Look at the flower.
Like, these people are crazy. They're crazy.
This is too much. It's too stressful.
Yeah, the government's gonna take it from you, man.
You're a freaking oligarch and you're doing bad things.
You're breaking, violating sanctions and stuff.
Yeah. What are you doing?
Don't be a bad guy. Just have a garden and be happy.
But that does.
But seriously, that does go to the my main point at least, which is you think?
They're happy with all this wealth.
They're not even happy because they're like, oh no,
my gigantic, gratuitous, enormous yacht is not quite as enormous as Bezos is.
Oh, and now.
His insecurities have turned into a financial liability for us, right?
Like like you had to buy the yacht and then violate our sanctions,
and then we had to take your boat or your or your yacht.
I know they're different things.
And now we have to freaking pay for the maintenance.
No, let's sell it. Let's sell it right now.
Who cares about the court system? Let's break the law.
No, don't. Don't do that.
- No. I'm kidding. - We got to follow the law.
And by the way, I don't want to take people's stuff
if it's not the right thing to do.
So, like, they yell at Biden for giving back some money to Iran.
But would the part they don't tell you is we kind of stole their money
in the first place.
Yeah, like they made the mistake of putting it on our banks.
We're like, well, we'll just take it and then we'll negotiate with you guys.
And if you guys give us a whole bunch of stuff,
including some prisoners that they took, which was totally wrong on their part.
So it's not like the government of Iran is like angels or anything.
No, they did that. Yeah.
No one. So they did terrible things.
We steal their money and then we do a trade and then everybody
else at each other, etc..
So but in this case Russia did invade and
people who were financing the war, etc..
In terms of Ukraine, this was a sanctions. It makes sense.
And if you're crying over it, I don't know,
maybe don't invade a sovereign country.
Final thing, even if the government succeeds in being able to sell that yacht,
their payday may come a long way from now, if at all.
Let's see why.
The attorneys for the yacht, the holding company, have basically tried to stall
and extend this as long as possible.
So, you know, we don't really know what could happen is they would sell it
and then that money wouldn't immediately go to the government.
They would then fight over those proceeds.
And so even if they sold it in a week, it could be months or even years
before the US actually got the money.
- Great. - All right.
So so far we've spent the money, but we might not get it back for a long time.
And this is us punishing the Russians, right?
Right.
As we pay for their expenses of their yachts.
Nailed it.