Putin's £82m yacht damaged: Polish captain acquitted by the court

The Polish captain accused of damaging the hull of a yacht that joined Vladimir Putin's private fleet has been acquitted by the Gdańsk court, as the Polish Radio Zet reported. The verdict is final.

The captain was acquitted by the court in the second instance and in the previous instance. However, the investigators and the company that owns the yacht appealed the court's decision.

Vladimir Putin owns at least nine yachts, but they do not appear in official records. The companies to which these yachts officially belong are variously connected to Putin. One of the most extensive and most expensive is Kosatka. The luxurious yacht is worth £82 million. The Navalny Foundation claims that just one coffee table on the boat costs £66,000. The equipment also includes, among other things, three armoured umbrellas initially developed for the French president.

The yacht was previously named Graceful but was changed several months ago. This was related to the fact that in January 2022, just before the aggression on Ukraine, this luxurious "Putin's yacht" was moved from Germany to the Port of Kaliningrad in Königsberg in fear of sanctions. Associates of Alexei Navalny revealed this and recalled Radio Zet.

The case concerns an event 14 years ago when the future yacht Graceful was transported by sea from Russia to Germany. At that time, it had a different provisional name, Newbuilding Hull A7887, and consisted only of a hull produced at a shipyard in Arkhangelsk. The Polish tugboat captain was tasked with transporting it to Hamburg, where the yacht was to be equipped. However, problems arose in Norwegian territorial waters.

When the weather calmed down, the captain and his crew resumed the operation, which was extremely difficult because, in the meantime, the Russian unit had run aground on a rocky island. The crew attempted to salvage the hull twice without success. Only after a week, with the help of a specialized vessel, was it possible to transport it to the destination. The yacht, then named Graceful, was launched at a shipyard in Hamburg in 2014, informs Radio Zet.

This is how the troubles of the Polish captain began. The owner of the yacht, the company Olneil Assets Corp. based in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, referred the case to the Maritime Chamber in Gdynia, according to Radio Zet. The chamber found the captain guilty in both instances, but the Court of Appeal in Gdańsk overturned the chamber's decisions in 2013.

The Russians tried to charge the captain with damages and took the case to arbitration court. However, they also lost in 2017. Soon after, they decided to notify the prosecutor's office of the possibility that the captain had committed a crime. Now, he has been acquitted.