MADRID (Reuters) -Spanish authorities on Tuesday detained a yacht called Lady Anastasia owned by Russian oligarch Alexander Mikheyev, who is under European Union sanctions, a police source said.
The yacht cannot leave a marina in Mallorca, where it is now moored, the police source and the Transportation Ministry said, confirming an earlier report from sailboat and yacht magazine Gaceta Nautica.
The 48-meter long yacht sails under a Saint Vincent and Grenadines’ flag, the Transportation Ministry said in a statement, without confirming who owns her.
Spanish authorities are complying with a European Union decision to block assets owned by a list of rich Russians with links to President Vladimir Putin in resposne to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mikheyev, who heads Russian weapon exporting group Rosoboronoexport, is on the list.
Spain is investigating any kind of vessel that is suspected of belonging to people under sanctions, the source told Reuters.
The freezing of the Lady Anastasia comes hours after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in an interview police had provisionally immobilised a $140 million yacht in Barcelona. That vessel belongs to Sergei Chemezov, a former KGB officer who heads state conglomerate Rostec, according to two sources.
Monitoring site Marine Traffic has said that yachts linked to two other oligarchs who are not yet sanctioned are also docked in Barcelona.
The West has sanctioned Russian billionaires, frozen state assets and cut off much of the Russian corporate sector from the global economy since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro and Belen Carreno; Editing by Catherine Evans and Angus MacSwan)
