Putin's Rich Russian Pals Are Hiding Their Yachts & The Internet Is Trying To Find Them
It's a billion-dollar version of hide & seek 🛳
Russian Oligarch Andrey Melnichenko's yacht, 'White Pearl.'
Internet sleuths around the world are joining the fight for Ukraine, and they're doing it by going after Russia's richest people and their massive yachts.
The United States, the United Kingdom and several other nations are putting sanctions on Russia as well as on its oligarchs, a class of super-rich elites with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some of those sanctions include seizing their assets, such as the nine-figure yachts they use to cruise around the globe.
Meanwhile, the oligarchs have been moving their yachts around while seemingly trying to protect them from seizure.
"The United States and governments all over the world will work to identify and freeze the assets Russian elites and their family members hold in our respective jurisdictions – their yachts, luxury apartments, money, and other ill-gotten gains," said the White House in a press release.
That's where the internet comes into play. In all of their crime-fighting glory, people are trying to track down the yachts using public data so they can be seized by Western authorities.
Several people have started tracing the yachts, including Jack Sweeney, the teen who tracked Elon Musk's jet.
Sweeney has created a Twitter page called @RussiaYachts, and it's one of several accounts following the luxury vessels.
He even went back to his roots and created an automated tracker for the oligarchs' jets.
Others seem to be using standard marine vessel trackers, like MarineTraffic, in order to pinpoint specific locations of the yachts. Each boat is able to be located through its transponder, so this has been a popular way for people to try and identify where the oligarchs are.
According to a MarineTraffic official, they've had a huge spike in interest recently, as per Washington Post.
A few yachts have already been seized including Alisher Usmanov's Dilbar ($648 million) and Igor Sechin's Amore Velo ($120 million), according to Fortune. It looks like many more are on the run.
Roman Abramovich, better known as the owner of Chelsea FC, has also reportedly been trying to hide his superyachts in light of recent sanctions. The Solaris ($600 million) has reportedly been tracked to the coast of Italy and his other yacht, the Eclipse, is near the Canary Islands. It seems he's really doing everything he can to not lose his ships.
It should be noted that the United States government has not announced any award for helping in the seizing of the oligarchs' vessels.
In other words, people aren't doing this for the reward. They're just doing it to put the screws on a few rich Russians over Ukraine.